


discernment of spirits

by Sciosa



Series: a little lower than the angels [2]
Category: Abrahamic Religions, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Sans (Undertale) Remembers Resets, and that is the whole problem tbh, dadster in the void, dear quantum physicists: please do not read this story, file under: sans' life is very hard, i don't know what i'm talking about and it'll just make you angry, the author doesn't understand physics and this is increasingly a problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 62,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sciosa/pseuds/Sciosa
Summary: (The spiritual gift permitting one to learn or intuitively know the nature of an evil or divine spirit.)Sans' perspective on the events ofin action how like an angel.





	1. recursion

**Author's Note:**

> Since it was requested several times (and since I think Sans has some interesting perspective on what's happening) I have created this as a companion piece for _in action how like an angel_. ~~It will be much less regularly updated, and will not cover as much material-- we will mostly see only the most interesting moments of Sans' perspective on that story. <3~~ Uh, this turned out to be a lie and now _discernment_ is updated in parallel _in action_ because I have no self control to speak of.

Wake up.

Regret that. Go back to sleep.

Dream. Regret _that_.

Papyrus. Wake up again. Thumbs up. Everything’s fine. Go patrol. Have fun.

Time to go find the human.

Looks like another bad one.

Dead eyes. Dusty hands. Not even a real knife. Doesn’t get that until… later.

Spooked Papyrus. Tell jokes. Not funny anymore. But. Nothing else to do.

Dust. Scarf. Stop watching. It’s all downhill from here.

Dust. Scarf. Stop watching. It’s all downhill from here.

Dropped the knife. Hugs. Finally. Maybe this time it’ll stick.

Dust. Scarf. Stop watching. It’s all downhill from here.

Just give up.

Hall of Judgement. Gold. Ringing silence. Wait. It’ll get here eventually.

Can’t even tell if time’s skipping in here.

No landmarks. Nothing changes. Stand still.

Better that way.

Found the real knife. Here it comes again.

Found the real knife. Here it comes again.

Found the real knife. Here it comes again.

_Found the real knife. Here it comes again._

Wake up.

Regret that. Go back to sleep.

Dream. Regret _that_.

Papyrus. Wake up again. Thumbs up. Everything’s fine. Go patrol. Have fun.

Time to go find the human.


	2. reflection

At this point, Sans knows the human child better than he knows quantum theory. (And he knows quantum theory _pretty well_.)

There are two of them. Or: there’s one human child, but it has two faces. Or: there’s one human body, but two human _beings_.

Quantum. Ha.

He’s not sure yet if there’s one anomaly or two; if the changes in attitude, posture, eye contact, _choice of weapon_ correspond to the way time ripples and fractures around the human. They exchange control at irregular and unpredictable intervals. It’s possible they’re fighting. It’s possible they’re _playing_. Even at their most personable, they aren’t much of a communicator.

It doesn’t really matter. At least one of them _is_ the anomaly. If he didn’t have proof before, the first time the knifey one got to the Hall and time unwound the microsecond their soul split would have been evidence enough. That lends credence to the theory that the anomaly is the knifey one, but sometimes a moment will fracture, over and over again, until the other one gets whatever it _wants_ , and things will stick to that (less murderous) timeline for a while. Not for long. But a while.

(He doesn’t know what that says about the anomalies that stretch further back. The spikes were bigger then, but less regular. And it was all before the human walked out of the Ruins. Probably before they ended up down here to begin with. 

Something to do with that flower. But that’s speculation.

He’s not a scientist. He can speculate if he wants to.

Not much else he _can_ do.)

He knows what Nice Cream flavour they prefer (when they care about things like food) and which Royal Guard Dogs they like (he can tell because sometimes a murder spree will pause for a petting break) and he knows they remember. They probably remember better than he does. When they bother with the puzzles at all, they still skip breezily through them on muscle memory. In encounters, they do exactly the right thing to FIGHT or SPARE without any hesitation, any experimenting. He hasn’t seen them get hit by anyone else’s bullets in… a while; they have all the patterns memorized. 

They know he’s behind them, even if how they react to that knowledge changes.

(He doesn’t think they understand how much _he_ remembers. If they did, the knifey one would probably start fights right here in Snowdin and call it a day. It’s probably the only thing he’s got going for him.)

(For a while, he thought it was just automatic. That whenever they died, they got punted back to safety and brought the rest of the timeline with them. Some human self-preservation mechanism. Then he watched them pull the snowman apart seven times in a row.)

They remember.

Which means they know what they’re doing.


	3. repression

He used to track the anomalies religiously.

Then he realized that it had been-- subjectively-- 678 days since the first time he recorded the human exiting the Ruins.

Sometimes the loops hadn’t even lasted an entire twenty-four hours before jumping back to the beginning.

And that wasn’t counting all the little splinter anomalies, time fractures of such short duration that they provided almost no useful data anyway. (Fifteen passes at killing Lesser Dog, two pattern-breaks to pet Lesser Dog instead, three more murders, one more mercy, and then looped back to the beginning-- no rhyme, no reason.) He doesn’t really want to think about how much time he’s spent being set back five or ten minutes in the same conversations.

Déjà vu doesn’t even approach it.

So he doesn’t track the anomalies any more.

The machines still spit the paperwork out in his lab. Maybe one of these loops he’ll be interested or morbid enough to find out how long it’s been since the last time he realized _how long it’s been_.

Not this one.

He does track some numbers. It’s kind of his job.

Papyrus has died 2341 times.

Sans has killed the human 783 times.

It’s a work in progress.


	4. resemblance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Nine of _in action how like an angel_.

Sans knows what he can expect when the human walks out of the Ruins. If they flinch when he snaps a branch behind them, it’s the other one. If they don’t, it’s knifey. How long that’ll last, who can say, but at least it sets the tone.

This time the human doesn’t flinch-- knifey one-- but they’re also not _walking_. They’re cross-legged in the snow, hunched over something with their back to him. So. Could go either way. But the knifey one doesn’t hunch-- never tries to seem small, never seems to really interact with anything but their weapon and their victim-- so he puts a tentative checkmark in the other one’s column.

Welp. It’s a deviation in the routine, no matter who it is. He’ll make a note of it.

“h u m a n, d o n ‘ t y--”

Deviation or no deviation, he won’t pretend he’s expecting the human to almost snap their neck trying to look at him, or fail to stand up so spectacularly that they immediately fall flat on their face in the snow, flinging their arms around wildly. The ominous silence is familiar, but that’s about it.

And then they start crying.

That’s a first.

Definitely the other one. Sans is pretty confident by now that if he’d ever managed to startle the knifey one, much less incite them to embarrass themself, they would have immediately tried to stab him.

So that’s something.

… it doesn’t seem to be stopping.

“oh jeez,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his skull. He doesn’t need this. What, should he comfort the time-controlling murder anomaly’s body-sharing partner? Thanks but nope.

The fact that they don’t even look _particularly_ sad while tears are streaming down their face is pretty disconcerting. It’s the kind of stony expression he expects from the knifey one, but the other one is usually a little more emotive. And sobbing isn’t usually something you pull off with a stoic expression. _Sans’_ face is more expressive than this.

Maybe not the other one after all.

Maybe the knifey one’s just having a nervous breakdown.

It could happen.

Fuck knows _Sans_ is overdue for another one.

The human makes a miserable keening sound around stuttery, choked sobs, all without so much as twitching an eyebrow. 

This is so not fair.

“uh,” he starts, shuffling awkwardly closer. What did he even _do_ when Papyrus got scared as a babybones? Fuck, it was so long ago. 

Or it… wasn’t. 

Technically. 

He should do an inventory of his memory at some point-- trying to retain this many timelines is probably fucking with him. 

Should he give them a hug? He might get a toy knife in the ribs. Might not be totally terrible to spend most of a loop dead. But then there’s no Judgement roadblock. Better not. “didn’t mean to scare you.”

Didn’t really think it _could be_ scared, to be honest. Certainly not by his _usual opener_.

“don’t cry, come on, it’s… it was just a joke?”

As close as he gets to humor these days. (This repeated series of days. _Fuck_ time anomalies.)

The human curls up like a terrified whimsum, trembling, and continues sobbing into their knees. 

“what the fuck,” Sans whispers, mostly to himself.

If this is a trap, it’s… a weird one.

Almost as soon as they huddle up, though, they apparently change their mind, because in a jumble of flying limbs they wobble back to a sitting position. Their face is streaked with tears, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop anytime soon. Sans watches with a kind of horrified fascination as they crawl over to-- oh, it’s their phone-- and hold it inches away from their flat, affectless face, blinking tears down their cheeks.

“Error,” they say, in a thin raspy voice, and immediately collapse back into a huddle of tears and trembling.

Sans freezes.

They’ve never spoken aloud before.

The knifey one doesn’t communicate at all, unless you count stabbings. But the other one will gesture, sometimes. The first time he saw it, three or four loops in, Sans almost cracked his own skull open trying to connect the shape of the hand movements to… _something missing_. But whatever sign language they’re using isn’t perfectly familiar, even in that distinctive _can’t remember_ way. Sans recognizes just enough to get the gist of whatever they’re trying to communicate, on the rare occasions that they try. 

But he’s never heard them speak. 

He’d assumed they couldn’t.

Guess he made an _ass_ of himself. Eh? Eh?

Not his best material.

“you can talk?” he blurts, like an idiot. Shit. “i mean… that’s, uh. ...sorry? are you… ok?”

The noise they make speaks volumes, to be honest.

“ok. yeah. dumb question.”

He killed them eight times in a row pretty recently, before they got fed up and looped back to the beginning. They did take longer than usual to leave the Ruins, even factoring in the relatively short, single anomaly that dropped time back about ten minutes a few days back. (Probably killing the Ruins lady. He's pretty sure that's what they usually linger over. Can't prove it, but honestly what _can_ he prove?) If this _is_ the other one, it’s not impossible that they’re still stressed out from the fight. Assuming the knifey one and the other one share experiences, which they seem to.

It’s really, really hard to remember sometimes that this is a kid.

A _murder_ kid.

But a kid.

As if in direct defiance of this humanizing, they try to hiss at him like a wet cat. Doesn’t really come through in all the sobbing, but he can appreciate the dedication to being an antisocial dick. Sans decides to magnanimously ignore this and drops into the snow bank next to the human.

Misery loves company, or something.

Crying doesn’t seem to be getting any better, but at least it’s not getting worse.

Kind of relaxing, actually. Usually he’s trying to convince the human to play nicely with Papyrus by now.

Probably doesn’t say anything great about him that this is the best morning he’s had in a while.

He pokes the kid gently in the ribs with a phalanx. They don’t even twitch. Put another tick in the other one’s column-- the knifey one doesn’t like being touched.

“you… wanna talk about it?” he tries. Maybe if they’re feeling chatty-- nervous breakdown or otherwise-- they can actually get somewhere with this whole thing.

Wouldn’t that be a change.

He holds his breath while they think about it, all curled up with their face pressed into their knees. Can almost see the wheels turning in their head. Wonders what it looks like in there. Might be messy. Might be _empty_.

They just shake their head.

“ok,” he sighs.

He’s not surprised.

He’s not even disappointed.

It’s not like they’ve ever wanted to talk _before_.

Sans spend a couple of minutes just watching snow collect on top of the human’s, frankly, _awful_ hair.

He’s had a lot of time to consider it, and it’s bad.

He would lay down money that the kid cut it themself.

Without a mirror.

Or real scissors.

“hey, uh-- what do you get from sitting the snow too long?” he asks, suddenly uncomfortable with the human’s whole… _presentation_.

It’s not cold enough for tears to freeze on the human’s face. But. It’s not _warm_.

He doesn’t _not_ care. Completely.

“polaroids,” he answers himself. No reaction. He nudges the human in the ribs again, careful. “yeah? get it? _polar_?”

Nothing.

Welp.

“...that’s, uh, your cue to laugh,” he says, and kind of _hates himself_ for falling back on the script. Talk about cues.

But.

There it is.

The human uncurls and looks over at him. Their eyes trace across his skull with unusual intensity-- _that’s_ not great-- but otherwise they’re as carefully blank as the knifey one always gets. If he couldn’t see the faint shine of drying tear tracks on their cheeks, he’d never know they’d been upset at all.

If… that _was_ them being upset.

“or, uh, to emote at all…” he continues, and this time he really _looks_.

Nothing there.

Not actually _blank_ \-- “blank” is an expression, it’s the kind of numb animal disinterest that characterizes the knifey one-- but _nothing_. Its whole face is totally _expressionless_. He might as well be trying to read an empty mannequin.

“...ok,” he says slowly. “that’s fine. everyone’s got their own sense of humor.”

It’s not fine.

Too many deviations.

Something’s gone off the rails, and he has no idea what it is.

Part of him wants to pull things back on track-- shake my hand, human-- but…

How many times has he _done this_?

He shoves his hands in his pockets and hauls himself up. Time to find out what he’s looking at. If it goes bad, fine-- he’ll deal with it. But if it doesn’t… if it _doesn’t_ \--

“welp,” he says, looking down into that familiar, _empty face_ , “i’m sans. sans the skeleton.”

They don’t react at all.

There was a time when Sans found it difficult to use the Judgement. It didn’t respond to his magic smoothly, and it scratched at those edges where he used to _know something_ , filled his skull with static and blank spaces. Which was fine-- there weren’t that many occasions that called for Judgement. (Not that much need for a Judge, honestly. But there you go-- redundancy.) He could afford not to focus on it. Hone blue magic instead, refine lasers, experiment with shortcuts, help Pap come up with new bone patterns.

Over the course of the human’s timelines, he’s gotten a lot more familiar with it.

One quick look. Worst case scenario: knifey one decides this is their cue to start stabbing. This timeline’s already weaving out of sequence. Might as well.

It’s not dissimilar to initiating an encounter. Most monsters can CHECK if they have to. Sans just gets more information. It’s not as dramatic as people think.

His vision narrows; blue.

There’s their soul-- still red.

There’s--

WHAT

_THE_

_**F̣̟̱̰̰̭̼̊̉̽̌́͗̒͜U̸̗̲̪͒͗̍̑͊C̵̢̗̘̫̺̦̦͛̏̅̈́ͭͯ͐̈́K̢͔̹̥̜̎̑͐̉ͦ** _

TURN IT OFF.

TURN IT _OFF_.

 _TURN IT OFF_.

 _T̨̢̠̜̹̱̟Ư̼͇̜̗͓͇͜R̝̖͎͎͜Ņ̶̶̦̰̖ ͎͚̭ͅI̛͕͙̰͓T̯͖ ̸̝̖̝͍̦͠O͚͢͜F̶̶̷͉̜̰F̴̝̟̪̼̞͉͞_.


	5. recall

(Here’s a list of things Sans can’t remember:

the first eight years of his life, at all

when exactly papyrus was born

where either of them _came from_

large sections of age nine to twenty-four, if he’s being honest

papyrus doesn’t sleep. just _doesn’t_. that’s not normal, is it? he can’t remember when that started

he knows there’s a place he’s forgetting

he knows there’s a _person_ he’s forgetting

did they ever have a family name?

he’s had judgement longer than he’s been the judge, hasn’t he?

half his conversations with the riverperson

he still hasn’t figured out what the broken machine in his lab was originally for

he didn’t teach _himself_ quantum mechanics

did anyone ever actually _introduce_ him to asgore?

there’s something wrong with the core. he knew what it was, once

at least one nonverbal language, probably

what, actually, _is_ a gaster blaster?)

Here’s a list of things Sans can remember:

that he can’t remember any of that

Which nobody else seems to be aware of. So by that standard, he’s doing great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how's that bait-and-switch taste?
> 
> So this is actually something worth noting-- _discernment of spirits_ is less formally structured than _in action how like an angel_. Sometimes there will be essentially interstitial chapters like this, which provide more context about Sans but do not directly fit the linear time of the chapter flow.
> 
> I mean, we all agree linear time is a fake nightmare anyway, right? ʘ‿ʘ


	6. recognition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Ten of _in action how like an angel_.

He compulsively tries to shut down Judgement as soon as he realizes he has no _fucking clue_ what he’s looking at.

Judgement totally and completely ignores him and continues to stare at… _something_.

The first thing he actually recognizes is light.

Souls are bright, sure. Magic is bright too.

Not like this.

He’s never _seen_ anything like this.

He studied astronomy. Among other things. Turns out, you get close enough, stars are superheated balls of plasma undergoing uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion in their own cores all the time. He’s never seen a star, at any distance, but he can estimate.

It’s not a star.

It’s maybe also not _not_ a star.

So: light.

 _Primal_ light. A light that doesn’t know it isn’t allowed to have mass, or volume, or swirl and weave and shape itself. The dream light has when it’s dark.

 _Inside_ the light, which a contradiction that’s already giving him headaches, there is-- for lack of a better word-- _math_. Not actually numbers, because that would be _normal_ , but the _idea_ of math, fading in and out of focus. He doesn’t so much see equations as feel them crawling into being on the inside of his own skull.

Sans knows _a lot of math_.

He can read… _some_ of what he’s looking at.

Most of it looks like the proofs to undecidable statements that aren’t supposed to _have_ solutions. So that’s… great.

Some of it he’s pretty sure doesn’t refer to the known rules of the universe. Or it refers to _different_ known rules of the universe.

Spinning in lazy, unpredictable loops around the human’s soul-- which, he confirms automatically, still hasn’t changed at all; LV 1 EXP 0 HP 20/20 AT 0 (?) DF 0 (?), and normally he’d care about those numbers, but right now it’s low on his priorities-- are rings of what _look_ like interlocking metal teeth. Or: the accretion disks that collect around black holes. Or: threads of golden-and-silver smoke, undulating in weird rhythms. Or: multi-colored mosaic glass, the unformed light gleaming through the panes to form even less substantial rings that spin in reverse.

All of them. Somehow. Simultaneously.

Jutting out of (and into) the light, diaphanous, disconnected bird wings mantle and flex. Feathers made of clay tile and sheeting rain and liquid neon and _bone shards_ \-- strung together by insubstantial and _impossibly_ dense spiderwebs.

Woven through all of it, apparently without any kind of structure or constraint, translucent blue fire-- which he resolutely _does not_ compare to the magic residue burning off of his own eye-- burns cleanly, without fuel, leaving no residue or damage behind.

That’s just… that’s not a soul. It’s not a bullet pattern. He doesn’t know _what_ that is.

It’s at about this point, less than a second after he activates Judgement and while he is still _very_ not prepared to deal with any of this, that it

opens

_its_

eyes.

They unfold out of the light like soap bubbles popping in reverse, photons drawing into the outlines of spheres as if a dozen undetectable gravity wells suddenly drew them in, spraying cast-off light behind them in glittering streams, meeting and _fusing_ into brilliantly golden spheres with raptor-thin pupils, _inarguably_ eyes--

(and he really, _really_ wishes he could argue this)

\--every one of which is looking directly into _his_.

Judgement works best with direct eye contact.

This is something Sans has never satisfactorily explained to himself.

It looks at souls. Why would eye contact matter? But it does.

This thing has _d o z e n s_ of eyes.

When they all look simultaneously into his, the experience is not unlike the crunch of impact after an _unspeakably_ long fall.

Noise.

~~in the beginning-- but if thou shalt indeed obey my voice-- do not forget to show hospitality to strangers-- holy holy holy-- how you have fallen from heaven-- and do all that I speak-- for by so doing some people-- numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousands-- and saw two angels in white-- and the earth was without form, and void-- _a l l e l u i a_ \-- then I will be an enemy unto thine enemy-- and there was light-- have shown hospitality to angels-- and an adversary unto thine adversaries-- and it was good~~

Pain.

~~quicksilver sprays out of the ruin of a malakh’s corpse, the last embers of fire sputtering out, the insubstantial fingers of flower petals held together by will collapsing with nothing to guide them-- your wheels spin and lock sequentially into position, snap snap snap, like shutters, and you shunt the decaying remnant aside, swivel, find another-- oh it’s running-- pick open the thread of its being; snip; watch it collapse, a wailing song; snuff it out-- snap snap snap, swivel, find another-- shatter its sword with a thought; fragments of molten metal fly into its face; _crunch_ \-- snap snap snap, swivel, find another-- electric blue eyes lock onto yours; interesting; peel back the skin of reality; _wrench_ at its wheels until they _crack_ ; break it open and pour all the matter out; watch it fall out of Heaven, sliding through cracks you’ve left behind; interesting-- snap snap snap~~

_Regret_.

“fuck!” he snaps, instinctively trying to cover his eyes. It doesn’t do any good-- he can see through his own bones just fine, and he’s 100% sure that _so can they_ \-- but he can’t seem to _deactivate_ Judgement and he’s, frankly, out of ideas. “fuck! what the fuck!”

He can _sort of_ still see the human through the layers of light-- and _everything else_. He sincerely hopes that what they actually say to him is “Choirmate,” no matter how incomprehensible that is, because the thought that he might have spontaneously developed a receptive aphasia on top of everything else does not thrill him.

And then the thing’s _changing_ , stages of it shifting in and out of his view, which-- he doesn’t really need it to get worse, thanks.

He can’t even _look away_ \-- something about its _army of eyes_ has some kind of magnetic effect on the Judgement. It’s _very obviously_ aware of him, now. All its incoherent, disparate parts are forming up into ominous rings directed straight at him, bright blue fire pooling in the center where the human’s _perfectly normal_ red soul bobs peacefully.

He guesses it would kind of be karma if it spat a laser at him. Or ironic? _Bad_ , regardless.

It makes _a noise_.

It sounds like a very talented symphony orchestra being eaten by a bigger, meaner symphony orchestra, at the bottom of a well. Sans claws his phalanges compulsively and scratches at his eye socket as if that might shut down the Judgement and _make the sound stop_. Predictably, it does nothing but _also hurt his skull_.

He has no idea if the human is actually in control of this… whatever this is, but from the Judgement it has to be the other one. The other one can be reasoned with. Sort of. It’s probably at least worth a try. “whatever you’re doing, kid-- you’d better stop.”

It just makes _another_ noise, and the fire streams up to the top of the configuration, forming a twisting, spinning ring that he doesn’t know the purpose of and would really like to not find out.

“seriously,” he hisses between very careful, measured breathes. _Fuck,_ what does he have to do to make that noise _go away_. “or you’ll have a b a d t i m e.”

It’s not exactly a ground-breaking threat but he doesn’t have a lot to work with.

“War of the Fallen,” the human says, because either _one of them_ is developing some kind of aphasia, or possibly the human is having a psychotic break. Another, different psychotic break. “Complete. Soldier absent without leave; unveil. Repair. Restoration.”

Yeah, no, that’s word salad.

Or.

Well, it’s--

Sans squints at the human, trying and failing to get a better look at it behind/between/surrounding/inside the-- what he’s gonna call a “soul matrix” for now because he has to call it _something_. It is not, strictly speaking, _comprehensible_ speech. But there is… a _kind_... of structure to it.

Something’s on the tip of his tongue--

~~and i will bring a sword to you--~~

Too much noise.

“only one war down here, pal,” he says, because at this point _why not_ \-- he’s pretty sure the symphonic hell beast is going to crack his skull in half in a minute, “and uh, unless you’re a lot older than you look, you weren’t in it.”

Neither was Sans. (Probably? Probably. He’s not missing _that_ much time. ...probably.) He’s looked at Asgore enough times to know it was… not great.

 ~~you rip; you tear; you crush; you gouge; you slice; you boil; you r e n d e r n u l l~~

There is a sudden, brutal _absence_.

From the corner of his eye, Sans can see that an entire strip of _the world_ has been ripped out. Something e̴̱̹̻m̧͕̝̫̱͕͕͘p҉̥̱t̫͍̞͍͢y̭̥̘̼̗̮̦ spills into the space, or _unspills_ the space.

H e c a n ’ t r e m e m b e r _t h i s_ .

He can’t look at it. He can only look at the spinning, _hungry_ soul matrix, with all its eyes pinning him in place.

 _He’s **right there** and Sans can’t **look at him**_.

“ok,” he says, and _pulls_.

He isn’t really surprised when the soul matrix follows the human into the encounter. He’s a little surprised when it _compresses_ itself into a little ball of solid light, completely encircling the human’s soul, but he isn’t going to complain about it. The human’s got no EXP right now anyway. He couldn’t hurt it if he wanted to.

But the soul matrix-- he doesn’t even need to see the numbers on that. He can see the _carnage_. Nothing gets to do that much damage without racking up consequences. It makes the knifey one look like a child throwing a tantrum.

(It _is_ a child throwing a tantrum.)

(Deal with that later.)

He summons a row of Gaster Blasters and directs them all to maintain fire. It shouldn’t take long, with that much karma beneath the surface.

And n o t h i n g h a p p e n s.

For a solid thirty seconds, the lasers don’t so much as _scratch_ the soul matrix, and then--

~~cracked wheels and fractured wings and disconnected eyes~~

~~f a l l i n g~~

~~crushed and discarded~~

~~like~~

~~glass~~

\-- something in the soul matrix _snaps_ , and Karmic Retribution _finally_ gets its teeth in the thing, visibly ripping through the outer layers of its shell, shattering wings and burning black scars into the wheels. And finally, _finally_ , all of its eyes snap out of existence, soap bubbles popped again.

The noise stops instantly, for which Sans is _unbelievably grateful_.

“SANS,” shouts Papyrus, not nearly far enough way, because Sans loves him but his timing is the worst, “WHY AREN’T YOU ARE YOUR SENTRY STATION, YOU LAZYBONES!”

There are _a lot_ of things happening here than Papyrus doesn’t need to know about.

Sans deactivates Judgement and drops the encounter immediately. ( _Deeply_ relieved to find that he _can_ deactivate Judgement. Walking around with it turned on for the rest of time and/or until the human finally kills him would be _profoundly suboptimal_.)

If he’s quick-- take-a-shortcut quick-- he might be able to intercept Pap and walk him out of the danger zone. Among other things, he high key does not want his baby brother encountering a leering empty void that Sans can barely keep at the front of his lack of memory. He has _no idea_ what would happen if Papyrus saw it. _If_ he would see it. He’s absolutely not taking the chance that Pap would just _walk into it_ without noticing.

Until his eye reactivates _on its own_ , and he realizes that the soul matrix has one of its golden eyes materialized, scanning over the torn open void. He _still can’t look at it_.

Which is why he sees the soul matrix shrug the world back into existence, instead.

Judgement falls away again as soon as it closes its eye.

Sans stares at the empty-faced human who is apparently now hiding a reality-warping anomaly on top of a time-warping anomaly.

Great. This is all great.

“don’t. do. anything,” he manages to hiss right before Papyrus, on a righteous hunt for slackers, marches into view.

“SANS?” Papyrus exclaims, reeling back as if Sans’ presence neither in his sentry station nor asleep in a ditch somewhere is a great shock to him. Which. It probably is. “WHY ARE YOU WAY OUT HERE? DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE-- GASP-- _PATROLLING_?”

Sans has never figured out why Papyrus _says_ gasp instead of just… gasping. But it’s comfortingly familiar, and also, not a conversation he’s had hundreds of times verbatim, so he’s kind of cherishing it, to be honest. Circumstances notwithstanding.

“nah, bro. i would never,” he says, beaming up at Pap with as much genuine affection as he can muster up. It’s not as much as Papyrus deserves, but he gives it his best shot.

“UGH! WHY DO I BOTHER!” snaps Papyrus, unsurprisingly. “WELL, WHAT _ARE_ YOU DOING THEN?”

There are a lot of ways he could answer that. Several of them would turn Papyrus right around in exasperated disgust, and that would solve one problem at least temporarily. But Pap’s going to run into the human eventually, probably, and Sans at least wants him to know what he’s looking at. Not that it ever makes a difference.

He jabs a hand in the direction of the human, where they’re still sitting the snow _not shivering_ , and gives them a look that hopefully says _if you hurt my brother it’s straight back to Karma for you_. “found a human.”

Papyrus is, of course, delighted. “REALLY!?!?!? WOWIE!!! THAT’S SO EXCITING. I AM SO PROUD! MY OWN BROTHER!”

Sans tries not to let that warm his whole entire soul, because it’s not like he did anything to deserve it. But. Papyrus just has that effect.

“HUMAN!” Papyrus continues, stomping _right up to the kid_. Sans chokes an impulse to pull him right back with blue magic-- it’s not like Papyrus wouldn’t just cancel it out anyway, and then he’d just get all ruffled and annoyed. “I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL BE YOUR CAPTURER TODAY! FIRST, YOU MUST STAND UP!”

Sans has no idea how Papyrus turned out like this if Sans was as responsible for raising him as he thinks he was. By all rights, Pap should be an equally shiftless, useless lump with nothing going for him but bad jokes and a tendency to notice things people don’t want him to. So this is just Natural Papyrus Behaviour. Helpful. Cheerful. _Doomed_.

They’re all doomed, of course. Equally. It’s just that Sans doesn’t care that much about the rest of them.

He’s pretty sure he cared more at one point.

This is probably a problem.

Papyrus pulls the human upright as carefully as if they were made of glass. Which is pretty gentle even for Papyrus. He’s been pretty exuberant lately. Little less aware of his own strength. Undyne’s influence. Not enough to make him careless, exactly, he’s never _hurt_ the human, but he can be kind of an excitable dog of a person sometimes. Jumping on the furniture. Barking at new friends.

Sans wonders if he can tell the kid was crying recently. That would probably do it. Papyrus is all soft spots all the way down.

“EXCELLENT WORK!” Pap says, patting the human firmly on the top of the head. Sans scans the human’s face curiously. Nothing’s changed. Sans can’t decide if that’s what he expected, or not. “NOW! PREPARE YOURSELF, HUMAN! FOR HIGH JINKS! FOR LOW JINKS--”

And there he goes, straight into his speech. This, and all of its variations, Sans has memorized. He tunes out a little. Papyrus doesn’t need his participation in this one.

The knifey one always skips Papyrus’ puzzles entirely. But the other one will do them, most of the time, if they don’t hand the wheel to the knifey one half-way through. They don’t seem to get anything out of it, anymore, but they let Pap have his fun. Sans can appreciate that.

This one, though… he’s not sure if he’s got the knifey one, the other one, or something new. If the soul matrix is just a layer _on top_ of the other one, or some kind of smoke-screen that’s preventing the human from acquiring their own EXP. Hell, maybe it’s the real anomaly. He has no idea what he’s dealing with.

There goes Pap, off to calibrate and fret. Sans relaxes tension he wasn’t even completely aware he was holding on to. What a mess.

The human follows Papyrus with slow, steady, _depressingly familiar_ steps. Sans watches them go with the sinking feeling that nothing’s going to change.

Nothing ever really does.

Hell, he just had a new conversation with Papyrus turn straight back into a script.

Natural rhythms. No point fighting it.

Might as well send the kid off right.

“i’ll be straightforward with you,” for once, “my brother’d really like to capture a human…” for more than ten minutes, “so, y’know, it’d really help me out…” if you’d _stop doing this_ , “if you kept pretending to be one.”

They plod along without hesitation.

Welp.

Back on schedule.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /banging pots and pans/ DEPRESSION IS THE DEVIL. DEPRESSION IS THE DEVIL. SOMEONE GET THIS SKELETON THERAPY STAT.


	7. reversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Eleven of _in action how like an angel_.

He takes a shortcut straight to his lab.

The force of the displaced air puffs a thick layer of dust out in all directions. A couple reams of print-outs flutter into the air like startled birds before floating listlessly into a disorganized heap.

...ok, so it’s been a while.

He flicks a hand inside his hoodie and the drawer with the most recent memory files shoots open with a bang-- the only thing that stops it from flying into the opposite wall is the casters catching on the track. Yeah, ok, he needs to calm down. He flicks through notes quickly-- skips the photos-- but there’s nothing that would suggest he’s forgotten about this _particular_ flavour of anomaly. Just a lot of math about spacetime distortion and photon resonance which, in light of recent events, Sans is increasingly dubious of. He dumps them back into the drawer.

He glances at the pile of paperwork on the floor and shuffles through it with the toe of his slipper, scanning for irregularities. Not that anything about this situation is _regular_. But. Different _kinds_ of irregularities.

After about thirty seconds he realizes he’s started automatically adding time to his anomaly calculations from glances at the paperwork ( _definitely_ over a thousand days, _wow_ he doesn’t want to think about it) and abruptly stops doing that, spinning on his heel and staring at the curtain over The Machine instead. That, right there, is a _harmless_ mystery.

That the irritating scratching at the back of his skull signalling _can’t remember that_ is now preferable to figuring out what the hell is happening to time is a factor he’s choosing not to analyze.

Again. _Not a scientist_. He can ignore data if he wants to. _Nobody’s going to stop him_.

His phone chooses this moment to remind him of the existence of the one person who might stop him. Sighing, he flips it open. He’s not surprised it took her this long to work up the nerve to call.

“Sans! What! Was that!” screams Alphys. Sans holds the phone a little further away from his skull.

“dunno,” he says, glancing back at the pile of papers resentfully. They lie there. “workin on it.”

“Working on it? WorKING on it?! S-S-Sans! You just s-s-split the world in half like a-a-a walnut!”

“uh,” The world dims. His eye lights must have gone out. He ignites them again by force. “no? i did not?”

“The f-f-footage disagrees with you!” she shrieks.

So that confirms that the soul matrix isn’t visible outside an encounter or a Judgement, then. If the cameras didn’t pick up anything abnormal but _him_ , then it isn’t visible at all without exposing the soul directly.

Jeez. Catching Alphys up on the anomaly status isn’t something he’s bothered with in… a while, but even if her info wasn’t massively out-of-date he’s not sure how he’d explain this one. _the anomaly-- which is the human(s), by the way, enjoy those calculations-- has acquired an incredibly dense defensive superstructure which is probably at least some kind of consciousness attached to the soul--that’s new to this timeline, don’t ask how many it’s been-- and which can manipulate reality apparently at-will_? _it definitely wasn’t me, even though you’ve been suspicious about shortcuts and judgement for the entire span of our acquaintance and i can see how, superficially, this looks like something you think i can do_? _**just trust me on this one**_? Yeah, that would go over well.

He suppresses an audible sigh-- no reason to add fuel to Alphys’ existing anxiety-- and scrapes the phalanges of his free hand down his skull gratingly, catching briefly in his eye socket. The anomaly-tracker beeps cheerfully-- ugh, why didn’t he give it a neutral alarm tone-- and spits out a new sheet. He snatches it out of the air before it can land on the pile and glances over the data. His soul stutters in his ribcage.

“i said i’m working on it. i’ll let you know,” he says shortly, and ends the call before she can argue with him.

Then, for good measure, he switches the phone off and chucks it across the room. It bounces around in a blue magic bubble for a while-- he doesn’t want to have to actually repair it, or worse, get Alphys to repair it; who has the energy for that argument-- while he glares at the paper. _That_ isn’t a timeline spike-- he would have noticed if his conversation with Alphys skipped; he would have _definitely_ noticed seven micro-skips in a row-- but it sure _looks_ like a timeline spike.

He rifles through the pile for more recent sheets. Yeah, yep, there’s the most recent spike before this-- aaaand right before that, the usual jump back to the start of the timeline. He scrutinizes the waves. They don’t look measurably different than previous anomaly behaviour. Great. So, nothing he could even point at if he _was_ planning to drag Alphys into it on this loop. Wonderful.

Whatever. Unlike the anomaly, Sans does actually have to obey (most of) the laws of spacetime, and Papyrus should be meeting the human at the first puzzle around now. He shouldn’t miss it. He flicks his phone back and shortcuts out to Snowdin.

Except the human’s not there.

Papyrus has apparently been pacing enough to wear a hole in the snow.

“SANS!” he exclaims, jogging in place and waving his arms exuberantly, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! THE HUMAN COULD BE HERE ANY MOMENT!”

“uh, calibrating,” says Sans, shuffling over to him. It’s not _totally_ a lie.

“OH. GOOD! BUT YOU NEED TO BE HERE AS A WITNESS! ANY MOMENT NOW, I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL CAPTURE THE HUMAN! AND THEN! I’LL BE! POPULAR???”

Sans reaches up to pat his elbow. “sure, bro.”

If they ever get out of this, Sans is definitely gonna have to do something about this whole ‘popular’ thing. Whether what he does about it is talk to Papyrus or _encourage_ people to be nicer to his brother, he hasn’t decided yet. Probably not a decision he should make in the middle of this timeline furball.

Realistically, he probably shouldn’t be making any decisions at this point. Objectivity’s out the window and has been for a while. But. It’s not like anything sticks. So who cares.

“ANY MOMENT NOW…” Papyrus says, staring doubtfully towards the forest.

Sans huddles into his hoodie and gets ready for a time skip. The only thing that ever slows the human down anymore is running into murder trouble and/or a power exchange between the knifey one and the other one, and either way that comes with at _least_ one anomaly event. 

Nothing happens.

“AAAAAANY SECOND…”

Sans glances up at him. Pap looks like he’s gonna chew through his own gloves with pure nervous energy in a minute. Never handled idleness well. Better give him something to do.

“hey, you think they got lost?” he suggests, and that’s all it takes.

“SANS! DON’T BE RIDICULOUS! THERE’S ONLY ONE PATH THROUGH THE WOODS! EXCEPT… IF YOU GO OFF THE PATH. BUT! THE HUMAN WOULDN’T-- UNLESS-- HMM!” Lightbulb moment. Sans smiles into his hoodie. “BROTHER! WHAT IF THE HUMAN GOT LOST! WE HAVE TO FIND THEM! OR ELSE! I’LL NEVER! CAPTURE THEM!!!”

“sure thing, pap,” he says, “you go do that. i’ll uh… check behind any conveniently-shaped lamps.”

Wait, he didn’t do that bit this time. Papyrus doesn’t notice, though, just goes marching back into the woods on a mission. Sans waits until he’s out of eyesight before shortcutting to the Ruins door.

Not here either.

Interesting.

He should check some of the major event points. Maybe they got hung up with Doggo.

But.

While he’s here…

He raps his knucklebones twice on the Ruins door, holding his breath, unable to entirely quell a flutter of hope in his soul. Which is a mistake-- the kid hasn’t left the Ruins lady behind in… who knows how long. ( _Paperwork._ )

...nothing.

It’s not fair that this kind of thing still hits him like a hammer to the ribs.

He skips through a couple of shortcuts, stopping just long enough in each location to confirm that the human isn’t there. Nothing at the Snowman’s lookout. Nothing at Papyrus’ sentry station. Doggo barks at him, but the kid isn’t there either. Well, good, maybe being woken up early will make him more alert when the human comes through.

He’s checking the fishing line when he hears Papyrus a little ahead of him, saying, “FOLLOW ME!”

Fastest shortcut he’s ever taken in his life, getting in front of them.

“hey bro,” he says, with as much _chill_ as he can summon at this point.

The human trips over their own feet, somehow. Sans raises a browbone as Papyrus catches the back of their sweater and stops them from face-planting. _Again._ That’s not normal. The knifey one doesn’t always have _great_ control, but in-- _a lot_ of loops, he’s only ever seen them fall when Undyne dumped them off a ledge or _he threw them_.

Possible the soul matrix is unbalancing them somehow? It doesn’t _seem_ to have tangible mass, but it’s not like Sans has ever gotten them on a scale.

“BROTHER!” Papyrus says, and Sans smooths his face out into a neutral smile again, “AS YOU CAN SEE, I HAVE FOUND THE HUMAN, NO THANKS TO YOU!”

“good job, bro,” Sans tells him, “tell ya what, how about you go on ahead and get your puzzles ready. i’ll make sure they don’t get lost.”

“ARE YOU SURE?” Pap asks, and just… looking at him breaks Sans’ remaining heart into tiny pieces, _how is he this person_ , how does he care so much about _everyone_ , “I THINK THEY NEED… LOOKING AFTER.”

 _not like you think, bro._ “no problem. i’ll keep an eyesocket on ‘em.”

Pap hems and haws a little, but at the end of the day he does-- for some reason-- trust Sans with the small child that Papyrus has literally just met and inexplicably become immediately attached to (as usual).

The human’s about as ambivalent to this exchange as he expected.

“so. ...my bro’s pretty cool, right?” he says, because it’s a) true and b) tradition.

They totally ignore him, picking at their cell phone instead. Which… isn’t _knifey_ behaviour, but. Who knows, at this point.

After an excruciatingly long pause, they nod. Which, to be honest, he wasn’t really expecting.

“yeah,” he says, scanning their face, but no matter how close he looks there’s just _nothing going on there_ , “so you should stay away from him.”

He doesn’t really expect this to work, if he’s honest. Can’t hurt to try. (It could hurt _a lot_. But no more than every other time they kill Papyrus. So. There’s that.)

Now they’re rubbing their face all over the phone.

(Theory: the soul matrix is just what cats look like on the surface. Heh. Alphys would like that one.)

“because you’re dangerous,” he tries. (Theory: they don’t realize they’re _hurting_ people, or possibly that they’re hurting _people_. That one’s been cooking for a while. Knifey one made it unlikely, but he’s willing to bump it back up the list.) “you get that, right?”

They nod again. He’s noticing a pattern. (Also, he’s pretty sure they tilt their head the exact same degree each time. So that’s going in the notes.)

“back to the silent treatment, huh? that’s fine,” he says, already tired, “i think we understand each other.”

Sans doesn’t understand _a single thing_ about this loop, but they don’t need to know that.

“you’re not the only dangerous thing around--” remember all those times i killed you? good times “i’m keeping an eyesocket on you--” not that it ever does any good “feel free to be a stranger.” _please._

Nothing. _Shocker_.

He sidesteps into a shortcut and drops out in his sentry station. He sinks behind the counter and pulls his hood up over his skull, pulling the drawstrings tight with a shuddering sigh and letting his eye lights click off.

Nothing ever works with this kid.

Why does he even try.

How different _is it_ this time? No, really. How different.

Ruins lady? Dead. No EXP on the human’s soul, so the soul matrix is either interfering somehow or doing the actual killing. Hasn’t attacked outside the Ruins yet, that he can tell. Control exchange after the Ruins? Clumsy. Expressionless. Not _emotionless_? Maybe? More communicative than ever. _Incoherent_. Probably _receiving_ language correctly? It responded in a coherent manner, albeit nonverbally. So maybe an anomic aphasia. Won’t be any more interpretable in writing, in that case. If he thought it would bother participating, he could test that. Was it always anomic, and the hand-signs are a workaround? Weird that it’s not trying them this time, if so.

 _Everything_ about this is weird.

He watched them peel the skin off the world and then put it back seamlessly.

If they can do that, why not just end the timelines _right now_? That’s what the whole enterprise is about, if the projections back at the lab are accurate. And he and Alphys were pretty sure they were accurate, at one point. Why bother with the loops, if they can just tear the world apart at a whim?

(Theory: sadism.)

He shakes accumulated snow off his hood, huffing. Forget it. He’s not getting anywhere. Going in circles. (Should be used to _that_ by now.)

Shortcut brings him just behind Papyrus. Not dead yet. Isn’t that nice.

(It is. Don’t be shitty. Don’t let _this_ get shitty.)

“hey pap,” he says, as brightly as he can manage.

“WHAT? OH!” says Papyrus, spinning in a comically large circle, arms pinwheeling. Sans is lucky he’s short or he might have ended up clotheslined. “THERE YOU ARE! THE MAZE IS READY! WHERE IS THE HUMAN?”

“no idea,” Sans says, and starts a mental countdown.

He only gets to 2 before Papyrus shrieks. “SANS! HONESTLY! I TOLD YOU THAT THE HUMAN NEEDED LOOKING AFTER!”

“it’s _snow_ problem, bro,” he says, feeling the start of a real, genuine, actual smile pulling at his skull as Papyrus gets more and more wound-up.

“AGH!” he screams, clutching his skull, “DON’T TRY TO DISTRACT ME WITH YOUR HORRIBLE PUNS! WHAT IF THEY DO GET LOST? OR DISTRACTED? OR OVERCOME WITH EXISTENTIAL MELANCHOLIA???”

Sans blinks, startled. “uh… what?”

“YOU’RE IMPOSSIBLE!” shouts Papyrus, posing in standard Disapproving Papyrus stance, fists on his hips.

Before Sans can decide if he’s going to just pile on as many puns as possible or try to defuse this particular lecture there’s a flash of movement in his peripheral vision, and he turns automatically to find the human skulking at the other side of the maze. Papyrus follows the direction of his eye lights, and immediately brightens.

“OH-HO! SPEAK OF THE DEVIL!”

The human.

 _Flinches_.

Sans narrows his eye sockets as Papyrus launches into the puzzle’s usual speech. _That’s_ new. The other one flinches whenever Sans approaches them from outside their range of vision, but they’ve never flinched at _Papyrus_ before. And the knifey one, obviously, doesn’t flinch _at all_. They’ve even heard that particular run-up to a puzzle speech before. It’s _been_ a while, since the knifey one’s been handling most of the loops lately, but it’s not _new_. What changed? 

He’s missing something.

“BECAUSE, THE AMOUNT OF FUN YOU WILL PROBABLY HAVE IS-- WAIT, REALLY?” Papyrus says, and Sans tunes in to the off-script beat.

The human nods. _Definitely_ not a receptive aphasia.

“WOWIE!” Pap says, _delighted_ , and _wow_ does Sans have conflicted feelings about it, “YOU MUST BE A TRUE PUZZLE-LOVER! OKAY, YOU CAN GO AHEAD!”

Sans sighs to himself and waits for the zap. It won’t do any damage, and Pap’s always too worked up to listen to him at this point, but. Still.

Nothing happens.

“...WELL?” Papyrus asks, looking a little flustered. Sans squints at the silent human uneasily. Knifey’s usually the one who refuses to participate. Did they exchange _just now_? How? There wasn’t an anomaly event. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? DO YOU NEED A HINT?”

They… hold out their hands.

For the puzzle orb.

Sans stares at them, _absolutely baffled_.

After a second, Papyrus puts it together and delivers the thing, leaving his usual solution in the snow. The human looks down at the trail, up at Papyrus, back down at the trail-- as if they’ve never seen this happen before. Like it’s the first time.

Why is _everything_ about this loop incomprehensible.

They don’t hesitate through the maze at all, but they wait patiently through Papyrus’ usual wrap-up speech, staring up at him from inches away. Sans doesn’t know how Pap can look at that empty face and not be even slightly creeped out-- the knifey one always spooks him just fine, so it’s not like he doesn’t _have_ survival instincts, they’re just suppressed under too much Nice Person to be useful in the end.

Sans watches Papyrus sally forth to his next puzzle, and then turns his attention to the human. Usually, the other one will bother him for his piece of the script at this point.

Not this time.

Too busy examining their cell phone in exhaustive detail again. They hold it close to their heart, like a talisman. He’s never found out where they got it, now that he thinks about it.

They dropped it, when they fell all over themselves outside the Ruins.

 _Error,_ they said.

He thinks uneasily about a stack of photos he can’t remember any of the details of between viewings.

“hey,” he says, and has _no idea_ what’s possessing him to care, “you know you’ve got pockets?”

He takes a shortcut straight to the next puzzle before he has to find out if they do, in fact, know.

“SANS!” says Papyrus immediately.

“uh. yeah, pap, what’s up?”

“DO I KNOW THAT HUMAN?”

Sans feels his eye lights shutting down and shoves a little more magic into them preemptively. Nope. Nope. He does not want to have this conversation again. Absolutely not.

Papyrus is looking at him with open curiosity. It is _distressingly_ similar to the look he used to give Sans as a babybones when he asked about what ‘mab sciens!’ Sans was doing.

Sans tries to stabilize his smile. “well, first, i’m disappointed in you for missing my _stellar_ set-up.”

Papyrus’ eye sockets narrow. “THAT’S NOT EVEN A RELEVANT PUN, SANS! WHAT IS ‘UP’ IS THE CAVERN CEILING.”

“‘up’ doesn’t have a pun ceiling, pap.”

“STOP!” he shrieks, and for a second Sans thinks they’ve been successfully diverted, “I’M JUST SAYING, THAT HUMAN SEEMS VERY FAMILIAR!”

“hm,” Sans hums, defeated. Fine. Fine. Let Paps work through it. It’ll be over soon. His participation isn’t even important.

“BUT I DON’T KNOW ANY HUMANS! OF COURSE! THAT WOULD BE LUDICROUS!”

“uh-huh.”

“EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE! WHICH I KNOW NOW! AS A GREAT PUZZLER!”

“guess so.”

“AH-HA!” Papyrus says, and Sans jerks out of a mild haze, glancing at him. Oh. Human’s here.

“SANS! WHERE’S THE PUZZLE!!!” he asks, per the script.

Sans does his usual bit without much enthusiasm. He thought it was amusing at one point-- word search, nothing to write with. In retrospect, it’s kind of a dick move-- certainly it isn’t the spirit of “FAIR AND CHALLENGING” puzzles that Papyrus gets so jazzed about-- but what’s fair about any of this anyway. It’s not like it’s anything but a mild time-waster at worst, and the human’s never so much as paused for it anyway. Even the other one just gives the paper a casual glance and moves on.

Except this time, because they live to _mess with him_ , the human sinks down into the snow and leans over the word-search with every appearance of an intention to solve it.

He blinks.

Well.

Maybe this’ll tell him something about the nature of the possible aphasia, if nothing else.

...maybe he _should_ have actually left a pen.

They sit there for a solid five minutes, tracing their finger over the paper. Sans can’t actually see if they’re solving it from this angle, but they seem confident, anyway. None of the confusion or hesitation he would expect to see resulting from a receptive aphasia.

And then they lean forward, squinting. And he remembers.

“heh,” he laughs, baffled, something a little hysterical rising in his ribcage.

He’d totally forgotten about the non-word. _And_ the letter transposition. Unsolvable. _Definitely_ not in the spirit of Papyrus’ puzzle ethos. But hell, he’s trapped in an inescapable time spiral. They can have one unsolvable puzzle. _Fair’s fair._

Tears well up in the human’s expressionless eyes. They make a tiny sound, just an indrawn breath, and pull the hem of their sweater up to cover their face, like a child hiding from… monsters.

Any satisfaction Sans was feeling sinks in his chest like a stone.

“Sans!” Papyrus whisper-shouts, appalled, “You Made Your Puzzle Too Hard!”

Before he can find any response-- any excuse, any _apology_ , he doesn’t even know-- the human stands up carefully, word search clutched in their tiny hands. Sans realizes abruptly that they must have put the phone in a pocket after all. They pick their way over to Papyrus, who looks like he can’t decide if he should stand still to be as non-threatening as possible or pick the human up in a hug and has settled on vibrating with distress instead. The human holds the paper up blindly, tears still wavering in their eyes, and wafts it lightly in Papyrus’ direction. He takes it very gently.

“Null solution,” they say, and walk away.

Sans stares ahead blankly, eye lights totally extinguished and not even bothering to relight them, processing. Papyrus sprints after them, dropping the word search in his haste. It flutters slowly to the ground, stupid cheerful cartoon staring up at Sans.

Well.

That.

...ok, so, maybe not an anomic aphasia.

 _What_.

Papyrus is gonna give him shit about this the entire loop. It’s gonna be that debacle with his ‘friend’ the flower all over again.

Sans blinks empty sockets, slowly, reaching back to increasingly-fuzzy memories. No, that’s right. The weird flower. Papyrus was really attached to it for a while. More than he is now. Sans couldn’t get a read on it, _ever_ , even with Judgement. But it reacted to Karma the way he’d expect a mass murderer to react to Karma.

Which.

Was great.

And at least once-- no, couple of times, _at least_ \-- it drove a wedge between Sans and Papyrus. Big stupid fake flower eyes all full of tears and recriminations. And Papyrus had believed it. Because it was “HIS BEST FRIEND”, and… and sometimes Sans was-- shit, what had Pap said-- no, it didn’t matter. The point was: flower, didn’t read right on Judgement, fake tears, big fight with Pap.

Sans narrows his eye sockets. Ok. _Ok_. Yeah. He gets it.

Without any warning, there’s a loud snap, and then a _boom_ , and Sans’ eye lights snap back on, and just as he’s turning to see what the _hell_ happened--

**ANOMALY EVENT**

Sans freezes, eye lights returned to an extinguished state. He lights them again quickly. Still at the word search puzzle. Short jump. Small mercies.

He takes a shortcut to the area-- Paps’ ‘spaghetti trap’-- and isn’t at all surprised to find the human blinking a few feet away. No idea how they blew themself up, but at least they did it at a standard anchor point. Deaths between anomaly anchors set back time _significantly_ more.

He’s not planning to interfere-- _maybe_ if they try to blow themself up again, _maybe_ \-- but then half a dozen golden eyes light up under the human’s skin and Judgement grinds to life without his consent again. He tenses, hands curling automatically into fists in his pockets, clawing at the fabric to stop himself from trying to dig his own eye out, as the same unsettling not-music starts up in his skull again. At least it’s quieter this time. _Undirected_ , he thinks. Which implies that it was _directed_ last time. Which-- _great_. Not at all ominous.

His eye is spinning in the socket, shifting erratically, as if it can’t figure out which eye it should be connecting with, completely out of his control. The soul matrix doesn’t seem to have the same problem, because it turns every single one away from him. He’s not complaining. That’s _fine_. He’s seen enough to know he doesn’t want to see any more.

Not sure how he feels about being ignored, considering they’re apparently responsible for the Judgement _rebelling_ , considering they’re trying to turn _Papyrus_ against him--

“cute trick,” he says blandly, and actually yep, there’s anger, he hasn’t really felt _that_ in a while, “crying on command.”

They don’t even turn. Just fiddle with the microwave, like he’s not even here, like they aren’t fucking with him _literally right now_ , Judgement still skipping erratically, unable to make a connection.

“so which one are you?” he asks, because he can’t figure it out and they owe him _something_. It’s stupid, it breaks his paper-thin cover, but whatever. Whatever. He’s not _getting anywhere_ , he’s _never getting anywhere_ , he’s never, ever, getting out of this, so he _might as well_.

They finally turn. _Nothing._ Nothing in their face, nothing in their flock of eyes. He’s not worth anything to them. He doubts he’s even _real_ to them.

And then they open their mouth and Sans can _see_ that they’re saying _something_ , but he can’t _hear_ anything but a shriek of s t a t i c--

his eye _spasms_ , light pouring out of it

his bones _crack_ , and there’s _void_ where he should have marrow

his soul _s h a t t e r s_

**ANOMALY EVENT**

Sans collapses into the snow like somebody cut his strings and ignites his eye lights in a blind panic.

Word search puzzle.

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> sans, ya dingus, _stop sabotaging yourself_


	8. recycle

(“alright uh, you’re gonna need an open mind.” 

“I’m a s-scientist, Sans, my mind is always, uh, open.” 

“... probably more open.” 

“What? W-what are these graphs… is that... where did you--” 

“maybe hold your questions until you’re done reading.”)

* * *

(“I-is this one of your… jokes?” 

“i wish.” 

“I’m n-not kidding, Sans, it isn’t very f-funny.” 

“yeah, i’m _hour_ -ware.” 

“...did you just--” 

“ _that_ was a joke.”)

* * *

(“ok, so where did you get your credentials?” 

“I-I-I don’t… what are we talking about?” 

“hey, remember who taught… uh, probably _us_ , quantum physics?” 

“O-O-Oh, yes, it was… s-s-sorry, Sans, d-did you need something?” 

“nah, forget it.”)

* * *

(“S-so if these calculations are correct--”

“i did the math.”

“Oh… so they are.”

“should be.”

“That’s, um… that’s r-really unfortunate.”

“yep.”)

* * *

(“k, keep an open mind.”

“I’m a s-scientist, Sans, my mind is always, uh, open.”

“trust me, more open than that.”

“What? W-what are these graphs… is that... where did you--” 

“read first, then questions.”)

* * *

(“H-how did you get a device to track the fluctuations?”

“i did the math. you designed it. took a couple of timelines to get it right.”

“I did _w-what_?”

“yep. hang on, i’ve got the notes somewhere.”

“Ohmygod. Ohmygod? Ohmygod!”

“heh. knock yourself out.”)

* * *

(“How, uh, how many times…?”

“fourteen.”

“Oh. Oh, w-wow. That’s.”

“yep.”

“Okay. We’ll… we’ll figure this out.”)

* * *

(“--and then converts geothermal energy into--” 

“--magical electricity, yeah, no, i understand that.” 

“W-well, what’s the problem, then?” 

“i dunno, alph, that’s the point.” 

“It works, I don’t…” 

“just, can you just… check? just run a diagnostic series, i don’t care.” 

“What?” 

“on the core, alphys, run a diagnostic series on the core.” 

“W-why would I… did you n-n-need something, Sans?”

“... guess not.”)

* * *

(“read this.”

“Huh? I-is that… my handwriting…”

“yep. no idea what it says. your penmanship is awful.”

“W-what… what is this…”

“open mind.”

“I’m a s-scientist, Sans, my mind is always, uh, open.”

“welp, here we go again.”

“What? W-what are these graphs… is that... where did you--” 

“next time, write yourself something more convincing, k?”)

* * *

(“alphys. uh. what am i looking at here.”

"Oh... my god. How did you-- how did you even get _down_ here--"

"i'm creative alphys _what am i looking at here._ "

“Th-they were fallen down… and I thought-- and the king-- I was just-- I was t-trying to h-help…”

"help _what_ , this isn't--"

“I… I messed up. I messed up r-really bad.”

“... oh jeez, alph. is that-- are those the dogs… and… _what happened_?”

"...determination. I thought-- the th-theory was..."

"when did you do this?"

"W-what?"

"timeline, alphys, when did the experiment start."

"It... it's before the loops start. It's a... a fixed point."

"...welp."

“I d-don’t-- I'll understand if you d-don't want me to keep working on the t-timeline. Just. D-don't tell anyone. I'm-- I don't know how to fix it. I c-can't tell anyone until I can f-fix it. I don't... I don't know what to do.”

“...ok. ok. we’ll deal with this. just. just, uh, c’mere. this isn’t… we’ll figure it out. just uh. add it to the docket. i mean, we've got... plenty of time. right?”

"... r-right. Th-thanks... Sans."

"don't mention it.")

* * *

(“S-s-so, why do you have a secret lab?” 

“i dunno, alphys, why do _you_ have a secret lab?” 

“For science!” 

“there you go.”)

* * *

(“W-what about that thing you do-- the shortcuts? How do th-those read on the equipment?”

“uh. they don’t?”

“Well, how do they… work?”

“kind of folding. kind of jumping. kind of… calculating?”

“Calculating w-what?”

“... everything?”)

* * *

(“I don’t understand why _y-you_ remember.”

“same.”

“You don’t have any _th-theories?_

“i mean. nothing testable.”

“Well, what _d-do_ you have, Sans, you’ve got all the information!”

“i’ve got a marginally less limited _view_ of the information. i don’t know what to tell you.”

“T-try _the truth_?”

“... wow, ok.”

“I-- s-sorry. That… I don’t think you’re--”

“no, yeah, i get it. you know what, i’ll uh… let you work.”

“S-Sans. _Sans._ ”)

* * *

(“you dropped this.”

“Oh! I don’t remember taking… notes… on...”

“...”

“What? W-what are these graphs… is that...”

“no idea. i’m not a scientist.”)

* * *

(“Uh, S-Sans, my notes only go up to t-twenty-six anomalies? T-there’s more than twenty-six sets of data here.”

“oh. yeah. i uh. got distracted.”

“You-- what, from f-fixing _time_?”

“yep.”

“ _W-with what_?”

“hotcats.”

“... I don’t--”

“don’t worry about it. they didn’t bear… _fur_ -ruit.”

“... pfft. Y-you have the worst sense of humor... I have _e-ever_ seen.”

“heh. you’ve mentioned.”

“When was t-that?”

“uh. forty… nine?”

“... well, you p-probably deserved it. G-give me those graphs.”)

* * *

(“O-okay! Sans! Get to the lab, um, immediately. I-I think I found--”

“what?”

“OHMYGOD. Sans. Don’t… don’t do that.”

“sorry. what’d you find?”

“W-well! It still needs testing, but l-look at these results--”)

* * *

(“so i have good news and bad news.”

“Uh? Okay? S-start with the good news?”

“k. found the source of the anomaly.”

“ _W-what_?!”

“yeah. that human? from the ruins? whenever they die, we get an event.”

“Oh my god. What does that… w-what does that even imply for--”

“not sure yet.”

“Okay. Okay. That’s-- wow. Okay. W-what’s, uh, the bad news?”

“well. this is the seventh time i’ve told you. and uh. it’s. not going great.”

“... w-what part?”

“any part.”)

* * *

(“hey alph. you want good news, or bad news first?”

“Uh? S-start with the good news?”)

* * *

(“you remember that open mind talk we had a couple of hundred times.”

“I r-remember the open mind talk that _I_ had _once_.”

“yeah. well. read first, questions later. we’re fifty-three loops into this one. call me when you’re finished, i’ve gotta keep an eye on the anomaly.”

“ _W-what?!_ ”)

* * *

(“Sans? W-what’re you doing here? D-did you need something? The simulations are still running.”

“nah. just. checking in.”

“Oh. Well, I was g-going to feed the… um. Are-- are you okay?”

“huh? yeah. fine.”

“... you, um, you know you can t-talk to me? We’re, we’re kind of. In this together!”

“... yeah. thanks alph. i gotta… do something. see ya.”

“O-- okay.”)


	9. relocation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between Chapter Eleven and Chapter Twelve of _in action how like an angel_.

Intellectually, Sans is aware that he is totally unhurt, because time just destroyed and reconstructed itself, like it does. So he’s fine. He absolutely wasn’t just-- he’s fine.

He only has one HP. So if he wasn’t fine, it would be. Really obvious. And brief.

He’s. _Fine_.

To the east, a microwave whirs to life.

Sans doesn’t even stand up before making a blind shortcut to-- his house. Specifically, lying on the floor in the kitchen. Alright. That’s fine. He’ll take it.

Smells like spaghetti.

Not ideal.

Snow melts off his hoodie into a puddle. Papyrus is gonna hate it. Sans counts the beams in the ceiling while he fumbles with his phone and dials from memory. Then he starts counting the wood fibers in individual beams instead, because he can get to a much higher and more calming number that way. Abstractly, he is already aware that this is going to be a problem, because it’s always a problem. Knowing that doesn’t in any way prevent him from _doing_ it, because he never claimed that he learned from his mistakes. On the contrary, evidence suggests that he just keeps making them infinitely in increasingly horrible variations into the heat death of the universe.

_God_ , he could go for the heat death of the universe any time now.

Ring.

17.

Ring.

34.

Ring.

73.

Ring.

102.

“Um, h-hello?”

157.

“Who-- Sans? Is this… that’s his numb-- S-S-Sans?”

239.

Oh.

She picked up.

It takes him a second to pull his mind back in the general direction of words.

“alphys. i messed up.”

“Oh, _n-n-now_ you want to talk, you-- w-wait, what do you, what’s wrong, what happened?”

A good and valid question. He has no idea.

“i have no idea.”

Alphys sighs into the receiver.

Relatable.

“O-okay. We’ll… we’ll science it. Okay? S-start at the beginning.”

Sans doesn’t even know what he would consider the beginning of this debacle at this point. He picks an option at random.

“human.”

“Oh. Okay! I’m watching, uh, I’m watching them right now! They’re eating your brother’s spaghetti somehow? They seem smart, and kind of endearing, and maybe into science! So… uh, i-is that what you want to talk about?”

Not really. Sort of. Maybe?

“maybe.”

“Um. Okay. M-more words would be good, Sans.”

That’s fair.

“yeah. you. remember the anomaly. research? last-- year… s?”

She pauses. It feels like a long pause. Sans re-runs that sentence in his head. Ok, yeah, grammar isn’t working right now.

“timelines. we-- i showed you. my lab? a bunch of times?”

Maybe they didn’t do that this time. He’s usually much better at remembering whether he’s done something in _this_ timeline or a _dead_ timeline, but as the older anomaly events from before the human fade into the-- _subjective past_ \-- it gets harder to keep track. 

Also, he’s pretty sure he’s disassociating a little bit, which probably isn’t helping.

“Sans,” she says finally, very, _very_ calm; preceding-the-storm calm, “Is this about the th-thing that happened outside the R-Ruins?”

Welp.

“yep.”

She doesn’t yell at him. This is kind of inexplicable. He expected yelling. He might prefer yelling? He should keep counting the wood grain, probably. Or sort the silverware. Or something.

“Where uhhhh… where you are? You’re n-not on the cameras.”

“house. my house. with papyrus. not-- he’s not here.”

Which is good. If Papyrus was here, Sans would have to put a lot more effort into not being not-okay. Which. Is bad?

“I thought you were with… o-okay. That’s f-fine. You took a… a shortcut?”

“yep.”

“Uuuuuh, okay. C-come to the lab. Okay? Sans? Come to the lab. Take a shortcut, and come to the lab.”

“k.”

“Right-- right now, Sans.”

“k,” he says, and blinks up at the tile of her lab ceiling. Oh. That’s even easier to count. Cool.

“Ohmygod,” says Alphys nearby, and scurries immediately over to lean directly over Sans’ skull, clutching at her snout. Which is. Mildly inconvenient. Now he can’t see the tiles. “W-what-- I didn’t think you were this-- _what happened_?”

Well. She’s definitely spooked. That’s not really what he’s going for.

“uh. technically nothing. this... _time_ ,” he says after a moment.

Not good, even by his standards. But he’s… workshopping it? Lab… workshop… nope, he can’t make it work.

Alphys looks like she wants to strangle him and is only being deterred by the fact that he’s made out of bones, and simultaneously like she wants to laugh, and _a little bit_ like she wants to cry. It’s a familiar look. Kind of reassuring. It’s been… a couple of loops since he really talked to her, but Alphys is still Alphys. So that’s. Nice.

“Don’t try to distract me with your t-time shenanigans. We’ll talk about th-that _later_. Right now, we’re dealing with… w-whatever… upset you?”

“i’m fine,” he says.

She rolls her eyes.

That’s. Also fair.

“i’m fine now,” he amends.

She squints suspiciously at him. He shoots her some lackluster finger-guns. She bats his hands out of the way and prods his ribcage with her fingers experimentally. She relaxes slightly when he doesn’t disintegrate. _He_ relaxes slightly when he doesn’t disintegrate.

“O-okay,” she says, lying down on the floor next to him. He follows her with his eye lights. Her expression is determined, and her lab coat is too big. She looks like a snow poff. With a lizard filling.

She takes his wrist, tugging gently until he lets her drape his arm across the floor, and starts applying precise, mild pressure to each phalanx-- distal, then intermediate, then proximal, from pointer to pinky and back again-- in turn. There is something about this that he can’t remember.

He sure is feeling some kind of way.

“We’re gonna... do some science. The first step in engineering is t-to break your problem down into m-manageable pieces. Everything is m-made of smaller things, and you have to make the s-smaller things first. So. Start with the… smallest thing. And we’ll, uh. Work our way up.”

See. This is what’s great about Alphys. All the science. He can do science. Probably.

Smallest thing.

Start at the beginning.

“k. good news, or bad news?”

* * *

The upside to this being the second sequence of anomaly events is that Sans-- in probably the only good luck of his life-- was actually working with Alphys directly during the last of the original sequences. She still has the notes and a working knowledge of the timeline crisis generally. It doesn’t actually take that long to update her on The Human Situation.

Then there’s the rest of it.

“it’s attached to the soul,” he says, then reconsiders, “maybe. it’s encounter-contingent, anyway.”

“E-except that _you_ can s-see it outside of an encounter.” 

At some point Alphys started just holding his hand. Sans isn’t really sure when, but if he draws attention to it she’ll freak out. He flaps his other hand in the air vaguely instead. “doesn’t count.”

“It s-sounds like that not only c-counts, it’s the, the _main problem_.”

“bigger picture, alph.”

“What bigger pic--” She sits up, clutching her face. Sans discreetly reclaims his arm. She doesn’t notice. “T-this is-- your calculations-- the t-timeline-- _everything ending_!”

“ _maybe_ ,” he stresses, “but they’re still pursuing… something. we’ve had anomaly events since the first… whatever they did.”

“Y-yeah, and _more_ reality fractures, like _k-killing you_ , Sans!”

“...well. it. was my turn?”

Alphys glares at him.

“it didn’t stick? they put reality back the way they found it?” The glaring intensifies. “i don’t know, alph. i think we’re, uh… really, finally above your paygrade on this.”

“Our paygrade,” she grumbles, standing up and shuffling upstairs, lab coat trailing behind her. Sans shortcuts up to the landing, and waves at her when she sticks her tongue out at him on her way past.

“you think i get paid for science?” he says, watching her shove unopened letters off her desk in the search for whatever paperwork she wants.

“I th-think you’re avoidant and unmotivated, so you won’t fill out the l-lab application,” she mumbles, which: rude. Also distinctly pot-and-kettle, but he’s not going to point that out. It would just depress her and then that would be their whole day, and the anomaly would probably jump back to the Ruins and he’d have to start this whole process over _again_.

Actually, that’s definitely going to happen at some point anyway, so he should enjoy this while it lasts.

She finally finds the anomaly map she’s looking for and traces the loops and fractures with a claw. Sans examines her bookshelf instead. Not that there’s anything new there, either, but it’s less frustrating to wonder why no one ever seems to throw away the fourteenth disc she’s missing in this collection than it is to stare at lines he memorized hundreds of loops ago.

“Um, Sans. How, how many loops has it been s-since the second sequence started?”

“lost track,” he shrugs.

“...you. You lost track? _You_ \-- lost track.” Sans has heard Alphys at a lot of different degrees of incredulous. This is the least credulous tone he’s ever gotten for something that isn’t _actually_ a lie.

“yep.”

“S-Sans, you can hold sextuple digit variables in y-your head.”

“yeah?”

“You c-count things for fun, or when you get bored, or-- l-like today. You count _e-everything_. I _know_ you kept track of the f-first sequence.”

“i stopped. it’s--” It’s an important component of not losing his mind, which he should probably not admit to Alphys ever. He should extra not admit it while she’s looking at him like his bones are made out of extremely fine porcelain. “i just lost track. it doesn’t matter.”

“... o-okay,” she says, which means she definitely doesn’t believe him. “Um. Do you. Want a hug?”  


Sans keeps his eye lights on the bookshelf and secures his smile a little more firmly. “mmmmnope. wouldn’t mind some science, though. got any science? i’m here for science.”

The noise of aggravation she makes would give Papryus a run for his money, but she drops it, which is all he really wants. “Well, _Sans_ , for science we need d-data.”

“i’ve got data. some data. maybe not the _right_ data, actually, i think the tracker is giving false positives.”

Alphys perks up immediately, which isn’t surprising given that there’s a machine involved. Sans watches her sideways with mild amusement as she crushes her own notes with badly-suppressed excitement.

“Oh! I c-can probably fix that! You l-left me the blueprints ages ago, I can… I mean… oh, it, it was probably even l-longer for… um… that was rude…” she trails off into an appalled whisper, staring into the middle distance.

Truly, these are the moments bad jokes are made for. “don’t worry about it, alph, you know nothing gets _under my skin_ , _tibia_ honest I forgot I even brought those over, howzabout you come by and _bone up_ on the facts while I keep an _eyesocket_ on the anomaly.”

Alphys stares at him, which is an improvement over staring at the spectre of her own failures. Then she snorts, swallows a giggle, and covers her eyes with her claws. “Y-you are… the _w-worst_ ,” she manages, strained by the effort to not laugh at his _perfect delivery_.

“aw, come on, i’m a _bone_ -afide comedian.”

She throws a clipboard at him. He shortcuts next to her to avoid it and winks. “you’re smiling.”

“ _F-fine_ ,” she concedes, “I’m smiling because you’re a _c-complete_ dork.”

“eh, i’ll take it.”

“O-okay!” Alphys says, clenching her fists in the lapels of her lab coat, “I’m gonna… leave my lab! To go to-- your lab! It’ll be a c-cross-lab interdisciplinary Science Investigation.”

“alright,” he says, eyeing the way her tail has curled up nervously around her toes, “i know a shortcut.”

Her startled squawk as he pulls her through space is pretty satisfying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this episode, some nerds nerd at each other, and also help each other with their crippling emotional issues.


	10. relative

Sans has lost a lot of the details about his life, but he remembers the important things.

He remembers Papyrus-- just little, _tiny_ , god, he was smaller than Sans then-- with big striped sweater sleeves pulled up over his phalanges, pressing his fists into his empty eye sockets, all pressed into a corner, making heartbreaking tiny little not-crying sounds because nobody would be friends with him. Not knowing what to do about it. Not knowing how to explain-- _just make yourself smaller, buddy, just make yourself harmless and silly and let them talk about themselves, that’s all anybody really wants anyway, i promise it’s easy_ \-- except that of course Papyrus couldn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t who he was. 

It kept happening. Sans found increasingly ridiculous things to do to distract him-- rattling to the floor with all his bones loose until Pap came over to nervously tug on his femur, just to pop up and pull Pap inside his hoodie like a boney mimic; picking him up and using blue magic to walk around upside-down on the ceiling until Pap noticed; juggling increasingly unlikely combinations of items; sitting cross-legged in front of him and casually drinking an entire bottle of ketchup while Pap’s eye sockets got wider and wider-- but none of that solved the problem, of course. Sans isn’t actually very good at solving problems.

He remembers Pap dragging him down to the Garbage Dump, all his phalanges just _barely_ wrapping around two of Sans’. Smirking down at the little goofball, who was practically _skipping_ with glee, who clearly thought he was going _real fast_ , while Sans moseyed along behind him obediently. Race car bed frame buried under half a ton of less-interesting trash, which Pap had apparently identified by one exposed wheel and scrabbled away at until he had realized he wouldn’t be able to move this much trash no matter _how_ plucky he was. Big pleading eye sockets with his little hands all curled up under his chin, like he didn’t know Sans would do _literally anything_ for him. Like shunting some trash over the cliff with blue magic was gonna _put him out_ any.

Sans let Pap ride it while he carried it back to Waterfall in a blue magic bubble. He made whatever he thought car noises were the whole way. He wasn’t thrilled when Sans made both him and the race car go through a couple of waterfalls on the way to sluice the worst of the gunk off, but Pap forgave him pretty much as soon as Sans dumped an armful of hoodies and sheets in the frame and let him build a nest. Worked until they scrounged up a mattress the right size that wasn’t full of rats a few months later.

He remembers Pap creeping into his room after-- _something_ \-- to peek over the edge of the mattress at Sans, picking nervously at the sheets. Crawling up onto the bed to tuck himself up against Sans’ ribcage, petting his clavicle with exaggerated caution, mumbling _S’ALL OKAY, S’ALL OKAY_ in as close to a whisper as he could get. Blindly curling his own phalanges around the delicate curve of Pap’s skull, his slightly elongated parietal and occipital bones, while Sans’ soul shivered ever so slightly brighter. Not enough-- nothing was ever enough-- but _enough_. Feeling less fragile, just for having Pap whole and here. Everything was worth it, if Pap could be whole and here. _Anything_.

He remembers Pap’s little phalanges curled up in the hem of San’s coat, trailing behind him, big eye sockets-- _WHAT’S THAT, IS IT A SCIENCE, WHAT’S THAT_ \-- so excited to get to come along that he didn’t even notice the disparaging glances of the adults. Always just a little too _much_ , never had an indoor voice and Sans wasn’t going to _make him_ have one. He would much rather stare at judgemental eyes with his own purposefully blanked sockets until he caught their attention, then pour magic into his eye until it ignited, huge and luminous and _too much_ , excess magic spilling off it like wildfire, stopping them mid-stride, mid-word, mid-thought, like captive butterflies with their wings pinned to the board, waiting for the final mercy. Judging them until they were able to drag their eyes away, stone-faced, and power-walk to another room. Not good at solving problems, but he could make sure they were _his_ problems instead of Pap’s.

He remembers Papyrus, already getting taller than him, pitching an absolute _fit_ about having a curfew (which Sans couldn’t remember why he’d instituted, sure hadn’t imagined he would ever have to actually enforce.) Throwing a completely careless bone attack that was nevertheless sufficiently frustrated, sufficiently _intentional_ , to knock Sans down to fractional HP when it clipped his clavicle and went straight on through his scapula to shatter against the wall. Nothing unusual, really, teenagers threw attacks all the time. It wasn’t a problem. Sans should have been paying more attention. 

Pap’s _panic_ when he realized he had actually hurt someone. Hurt _Sans_. It probably hadn’t helped that Sans’ soul had cracked ominously, that dust had scattered the carpet in the trajectory of the attack. He could see how that had seemed a little dire. It was possible that a pun hadn’t been the right response, but in his own defense: “ _shoulder_ seen that coming” was pretty good considering. Then an extremely long and unpleasant conversation about Sans’ HP that he had never really _wanted_ to have, but here they were. Pap nervously trying to feed him the entire contents of their kitchen like it was going to make any difference once he got back up to his customary 1 HP. The Spaghetti Thing hadn’t started until Undyne, but The Stress Cooking Thing had definitely started here.

He remembers Papyrus deciding-- entirely spontaneously, as far as Sans could tell-- that any food which had ever even been in the same room as frying oil was Absolutely Vile and Probably Cursed. Grillby had been a little disgruntled, since Pap had come to this conclusion _in the bar_ , while staring at a burger he’d eaten dozens of times before. The little weirdo. Sans learned to get creative with water sausages.

He remembers Pap getting into fights-- not even encounters, just _fights_ \-- with the dogs, dodging the issue whenever Sans tried to bring it up, going all bright and guileless. The dogs didn’t seem to hold it against him, and eventually Sans gave up trying to make him stop. After a couple of months, the incidents fell off and everybody acted like it had never happened, except maybe that one dog that to this day kept stealing Pap’s bone attacks. Took him _years_ to figure out that was probably while Pap was configuring his blue attacks and learning how to control the _precise_ amount of damage he did with each attack. Learning how to _stop_ doing damage mid-attack if he had to. Couldn’t practice with Sans. Obviously. It was almost a year before Pap would even agree to enter encounters with him.

He remembers Papyrus humming and nodding along with bedtime stories, all his long bones curled up into the race car bed he barely fits in, these days, but cheerily refuses to trade for anything. The books are for show at this point, and they both know it-- Sans memorized these _years_ ago-- but it’s tradition. Routine. Something. They both know that at the end of the story, Papyrus is going to lie there for a total of fifteen minutes, max, basking in the Bedtime Story Ritual, before he gets up and immediately does something productive instead. They won’t talk about it, because Sans really doesn’t have any room to talk about maladaptive sleep patterns. In about three hours, Sans will snap out of a nightmare he can’t remember, and Pap will pace outside the locked door of his room. They won’t talk about that, either.

He remembers Papyrus.

You know.

The important things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, pls take this brotherly fluff.


	11. reformat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Twelve of _in action how like an angel_.

Turns out Alphys _has_ seen his lab, so that’s great, he can skip whole conversations here. Once she finishes judging him for his pile of print-outs-- which, he’s seen her desk, she doesn’t have that much room to talk-- she immediately starts disassembling the anomaly tracker and Sans figures he should probably leave her to it. She’ll be busy lovingly mumbling to its gears and petting its circuits for the foreseeable future. (Assuming they get enough future for her to finish it, anyway.)

He’s definitely left the human (?) unsupervised too long-- _great_ job, Sans-- so he has to skip through several shortcuts before he finds them dully plodding through Papyrus’ face puzzle.

Despite everything, he huffs half a laugh into the collar of his hoodie as the final tile is flipped and Papyrus practically does a little dance of delight before he composes himself enough to deliver his usual congratulations. The human doesn’t seem interested, but they don’t seem interested in _anything_. There’s no accounting for taste. Sans can hear Pap quietly _nyeh-heh-heh_ ing to himself as he zips ahead to the next puzzle. Too bad it’s gonna be a bust; Pap always gets so excited about it.

And then the human steps towards him, and Sans is pretty sure his soul shouldn’t be doing whatever _those_ acrobatics are. Feels like it’s trying to dissolve inside his bones, losing cohesion, dripping down the column of his spine, pooling between his ribs. (It isn’t. There’s no soft white glow through his bones. It’s exactly where it’s supposed to be, what the _hell_.)

Doesn’t seem healthsome. Would not recommend. Could stop any time now. _Thanks_.

(He remembers it shattering. Given everything else that was happening to him it wasn’t even especially dramatic, souls shatter, that’s how it happens, nothing special, but that’s. What he remembers. That sharp splinter of a moment, and then before he could even really process--)

( _Melting_ , though, that’s--)

( ~~Do his hands have holes in them?~~ ) 

(O̡͉̩͎h̼̺̪̙͟,̵̨̡̦ ̷̤̼͟n͏̛͇̮̝͉̰̭͇̖e͏̧̩̣̗̜̩ͅv̰͕̮̟͢e̺͍̼̻̳r̵̡̭̭͖m̗̤͙̲͍̳̱i̴̩̮̫͓͉̘n͈͎ḓ̵͈͕̱͚̭̮̪ ̯̯͟t҉̝̝h͖̣̜̪͕̹̭̻e̼̯͔̟̞͕̜m̡̪̲̼̪̣̪.̶̧̳.) 

(Oh, nevermind, then.)

( _What?_ )

If this is gonna happen every time they kill him from now on, he’s going to lose his mind at an exponentially faster rate.

He drags his eyes away from their creepily stiff approach, and that _kind of_ helps, in that his soul stops trying to melt into a puddle. Doesn’t help with the paranoia, but then, what does.

And you know what--

“good job on solving it so quickly,” he says in his absolutely flattest voice, perfected over _an unthinkably long time_ , keeping his eye lights fixed somewhere vaguely left of the kid. “you didn’t even need my help.”

They _sure_ don’t deserve anything but rote script from him. Not that he’s done himself any _favours_ , they have surely _picked up_ that he knows (an approximation) of the score, but hey. If he has to live with the script, they can live with the script. Turnabout, or something.

(Turnabout would be turning their soul blue and flinging them unceremoniously off a cliff; or maybe that’s what killing him was. He has no idea anymore. This whole repetitive murder thing is really losing its already extremely thin appeal.)

Fortunately (?) they seem exactly as interested in his speech as they were in Papyrus’. Zero percent.

That’s great.

That is exactly what he wants. To be totally ignored by the murder child up until the moment it inevitably becomes exactly no one else’s problem but his because there is exactly no one else left to be troubled by it.

That’s not what he wants.

He doesn’t know what he wants anymore.

For everything to just kind of _stop_ , but good luck with that one.

He’ll take not being ripped apart at the seams and call it a success. He’s willing to be self-delusional about it. A little bit of willful blindness goes a long way. Just. Shut off his eye lights and go to the hall and wait. Just wait. It’s so much easier. It’s so much--

Papyrus is waiting for him.

It’s a _very_ quick shortcut to the tile puzzle, and under other circumstances-- which Sans admittedly hasn’t been privy to in _a long time_ , but which he remembers with a kind of vague and wistful fondness-- Papyrus would probably have pitched a fit about him showing up in random locations without using his legs to get there. How much exactly Papyrus understands about Sans’ magic is up in the air-- Sans has never actually _talked_ to him about it, for a whole series of reasons, not least of which is that he’s pretty sure neither of them would remember most of that conversation-- but he _definitely_ knows (and _definitely_ disapproves) that Sans’ ability to be wherever he needs to be has nothing to do with a work-out routine.

Under _these_ circumstances, Papyrus is-- as usual-- fiddling with the puzzle machine, a thread of nervous excitement running beneath his boisterous delight at finally having something (someone? some _thing_ ) to capture.

Pap glances over at him, back at the machine, and then does a double-take that Sans normally finds very amusing. He normally finds it amusing, because Papyrus’ expression is _normally_ startled exasperation at finding Sans someplace he wasn’t expecting him. It does not, normally, twitch straight into horrified concern, his sockets slack and brow ridge pinched. More loops than Sans can (willingly) count, and he’s never seen that look on his brother’s face. He doesn’t even look at the _human_ like that.

“uh,” says Sans, intelligently.

“OH, SANS, I DID NOT SEE YOU THERE,” says Papyrus, in his loudest voice, pulling on a more familiar expression of distracted fondness. So apparently he isn’t interested in talking about it.

Sans does some quick mental rewinding, but nothing’s happened in Papyrus’ presence that should have upset him. Except the word search thing, but Sans was expecting irritation about that, not… whatever this is. He’s not sure if he should be apologizing, or trying to break the tension-- is there tension?-- or just playing along as if Pap _hadn’t_ made that face at him.

“SANS,” Papyrus says suddenly, staring at the machine instead of actually looking at him. Nothing about this seems okay. “IF SOMETHING WAS WRONG… YOU WOULD… TELL ME, RIGHT?”

Sans has literally never in his memory, in any of hundreds of timelines, willingly told Papyrus that anything was wrong. On the very, very rare occasions that he has been forced to _confess_ that something was wrong, it has only ever been under duress.

This seems like it is probably not the right thing to say.

Something about the line of Papyrus’ shoulders gets tighter. “BECAUSE!” he says, brightly brittle, still facing the blinking lights. “I AM YOUR BROTHER! SO! OF COURSE YOU WOULD TELL ME! IF YOU NEEDED MY HELP WITH ANYTHING! OR EVEN JUST WANTED IT! THAT’S WHAT BROTHERS ARE FOR!”

There is no way to have this conversation that does not make Sans miserable in one way or another, but he probably has to actually say _something_ at some point. Unfortunately, all he manages to get past his teeth is a kind of strangled, “yep,” that’s about as convincing as a moldsmal trying to pass for a dog.

Papyrus makes a noise of total aggravation and turns, but something arrests his attention halfway and he goes rigid, hands clawed up around his face. Sans watches with dull horror as every sign of frustration evaporates instantly, Pap’s hands dropping to his hips and head cocking at a jaunty angle, smile loose and welcoming. Holy shit.

“HUMAN! YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THIS PUZZLE!” he yells across the tiles, sounding like this is literally the only thing he’s been thinking about all day. Not at all like he was just thirty seconds away from shaking all the secrets out of Sans.

Sans manages to drag his eye lights away from his brother long enough to confirm that yeah, the human is actually standing there and this isn’t some kind of psychotic break, and then totally tunes out as Papyrus launches into his usual speech about the tiles. Pap seems absolutely fine. _Pap is absolutely not fine_.

How long has _this_ been happening? How long has Pap been just… doing whatever this is, hiding his stress, his _distress_ from Sans? How has he not noticed this happening. 

_A little bit of willful blindness_.

Great job, Sans. A+ brothering, you _idiot_.

The puzzle fails in the expected fashion. Papyrus makes a noise of exaggerated, theatrical frustration which is _extremely wrong_ immediately following the stark, genuine snarl that had spilled out of him five minutes ago.

Sans has been through this _literally_ more times than he has cared to count.

He thought he knew how to read his brother.

Apparently, he is very, _very_ bad at reading his brother.

And then his _stupid eye_ flares, washes out his whole range of vision with blue, and there is a horrible moment when Sans thinks-- _oh good, I can Judge him and figure out what the hell is wrong_ \-- and _nope_ he is not doing that, he is a shit brother but he’s not doing that, absolutely not, no way, no how. There is absolutely nothing easy about dragging his attention vaguely left and down at the ground, especially since his eye is still obsessively and incomprehensibly trying to track to the soul matrix’s handful of glittering hawk eyes, but either the distance or the fact that every single one of those eyes is fixed on the tiles-- if he was going to guess, on the math that runs them, but he’s not going to guess because he doesn’t really want to know-- is at least making it _possible_. He will count his extremely limited blessings while he has them and not question it.

Sans had really thought they got past this whole “don’t tell your brother what you’re doing” phase years ago, long before time’s first adventure in not working correctly, but here they are.

Not that he really has a leg to stand on there.

He’s got nobody to blame but himself.

What a mess.

Well, at least he’ll have _plenty of time_ to workshop solutions. At this rate, spending loops banging his skull against the inevitable brick wall of Figuring Out Papyrus will _still_ be more productive than anything else he’s been doing.

He’s dimly aware of the soul matrix closing it’s eyes, the release of Judgement shuttering itself automatically.

“AH-HA!” shouts Papyrus, sounding pleased and surprised. Sans jerks his attention back to the actual situation. _Focus_ , Sans. “WHAT A FIENDISHLY DIFFICULT PUZZLE!”

Huh.

So it is.

Is _that_ what the soul matrix was doing? ...why?

(Word search. _Null solution_. It’s not impossible that Sans is a jerk. That wouldn’t be new information, per se, but it would be a bummer.)

Of course, at this point ‘why’ is the big question about everything the anomaly does, so whatever.

The human picks themself up, wobbly-legged in a way that’s getting weirdly familiar, and peers over the tiles. Puts the cell phone in a pocket, and Sans suddenly remembers, with a sinking feeling, that they started doing that after he mentioned it. Things got kind of crazy immediately thereafter, so he lost track of it, but that’s definitely the order of events. So apparently they _didn’t_ know they had pockets before, or at least it hadn’t occurred to them to use them. Which they definitely _did_ know on previous loops. Data point. Maybe it really isn’t the knifey one _or_ the other one. Third one? 

...would explain a lot of incongruous behaviour.

Jeez, how many beings are there in that little body.

After a moment, to his surprise, they nod decisively-- still not talking anymore, nor using hand signs, but they’re interacting clearly and without confusion; more data-- and start picking their way across the tiles. He scans the maze quickly, and they do seem like they’ve got a grip on the right solution. Intentional? If they did something to set a new puzzle, they could already know the answer.

He’s a little surprised by how unlikely he finds that.

It’s not like the human has ever been particularly interested in _playing fair_.

But. Possible he’s dealing with a new variable. More new variables than he thought. Open mind, right?

Wow, they don’t handle lubricated friction well _at all_ , huh. Right into the water. They pop their head up after a disconcertingly long moment, blinking water out of their eyes. They don’t look surprised at all, but they don’t look _anything_.

If this is just low affect, it’s the _flattest_ affect Sans has ever seen. It’s right in the uncanny valley, is what it is. Humans, monsters, it doesn’t matter-- _living things_ , even skeletons, aren’t supposed to be that expressionless. It sets off every basic survival instinct Sans has, _danger danger danger_ , don’t touch it, you don’t know where it’s been or what its teeth look like.

(They don’t check on their cell phone. Sans finds this surprising, but it’s possible that either a) it’s already irretrievably broken and they’re just holding onto it out of… _nostalgia_? or b) they don’t know enough about how electronics work to be worried about submersion. Counterpoint: microwave. He should check on that at some point.)

They’re strangely avoidant of the green tiles, which is weird considering it just means they have to have an encounter, and so far they’ve exhibited _zero_ anxiety about that. Sans couldn’t actually get any numbers on the soul matrix during that initial Judgement and encounter-- it didn’t seem to _have_ any statistics that he could see, which was a first-- but whatever DEF it has is more than enough to stand up to sustained Karma despite _definitely_ being in the range for Karma to do real damage. So it’s not like they have to worry about their survivability, and with their… uh… bag of tricks on hand, it’s not like they’d have a hard time murdering their way out of it. Not that Sans _wants_ them to murder their way through a puzzle, just. They very easily _could_. For that matter, Sans knows the other one, at least, understands how MERCY works, and that would get them through an encounter just as easily.

And instead they’re staring blankly between two green tiles as if staring long enough will convince one of them to become a more acceptable color.

Papyrus has been wringing his gloves beside Sans for the last five minutes, pointedly _not looking at him_ , and finally comes to some kind of decision, because he shouts some very oblique advice that lets the human double-back to a different solution. The human visibly traces the alternate path with their eyes for a moment, then turns to Papyrus and shows him a thumbs up paired with the regular empty expression.

Somehow it’s still weirdly endearing.

It only takes them a few more minutes to pick their careful way across the rest of the maze, and then they stop right in front of Papyrus, apparently waiting for approval. Pap, because he is a _sap_ , ruffles their ( _terrible_ ) hair and promises to make them celebratory spaghetti.

Didn’t Alph says they actually ate the frozen spaghetti earlier?

Sans loves his brother, but even he won’t eat Pap’s idea of pasta unless the situation is unavoidable.

The human doesn’t look enthusiastic, exactly, but they do watch Papyrus’ retreat to the next puzzle. Not _wistful_. Because: no affect.

He’s projecting, probably.

Then as soon as they look at him his soul shivers ominously and he takes an abrupt, almost compulsive shortcut forward to the “Gauntlet of Deadly Terror”. Papyrus isn’t even here yet.

Yeah, no, this can’t keep happening. If nothing else, this is gonna make the Hall of Judgement encounter, when they get around to it, _deeply unpleasant_ on top of probably impossible.

Apprehensively, he pulls his soul out to see what’s wrong with it. It coalesces between his hands, soft white and fragile, the hairline shadow of old cracks still creeping across it like spiderwebs. Nothing out of the ordinary. Exactly as usual. _Definitely_ not dissolving into goo.

“SANS?” says Papyrus, and Sans startles hard enough that he practically slams his soul into his ribcage in his attempt to put it back where it belongs before it can become A Problem, which is not the smartest decision he’s ever made. Ow.

“uh, hey pap,” he coughs, clawing his phalanges around his clavicle. Oof. Yup. That was too fast. Don’t manhandle your own soul, kids. Take it from Uncle Sans, it’s not a great time.

Papyrus can move pretty fast when he wants to-- of course he can, his legs are taller than _Sans_ is-- and before Sans can even really look at him Pap’s already crouched in the snow in front of him, pressing his glove over Sans’ hand and pouring green magic into him helpfully. Which isn’t necessary, really, he didn’t technically do any HP damage to himself-- _fortunately_ \-- but it dissolves the discomfort anyway, his soul wrapping itself in Papyrus’ familiar magic happily.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOURSELF,” Papyrus says. Which isn’t an unusual thing for him to say, necessarily. Usually he sounds more chiding and less sad, though.

“oh jeez,” says Sans, tugging his hood up nervously. “we really gotta have this talk, huh.”

Papyrus hesitates.

 _Papyrus_. Hesitates.

“NOT IF IT MAKES YOU UNHAPPY,” he says reluctantly, pulling back and extending up to his full height, wringing his gloves. Sans looks up at him, glances across the bridge. No human yet, but honestly they could show up any second. It’s not a long walk, even if they don’t seem totally sure how their legs work.

“uh. tell you what,” he says, extending a hand to Papyrus. Whatever, if he’s gonna spill his nonexistent guts he might as well do it all at once and get it over with. At least he’ll find out how it goes over for next timeline. “i know a shortcut to a place we can talk.”

Papyrus’ face lights up, and he slams both hands against the sides of his skull. “SCIENCE!” he says, nonsensically, and takes Sans’ hand.

Well. Alphys will have to get used to having a lab buddy for a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahem. PAPYRUS IS NOT AN IDIOT, BUT SANS KIND OF IS ONE SOMETIMES. Thank you for your attention.


	12. refactor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen of _in action how like an angel_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEARS. MAY 2019 BE PRODUCTIVE, GENTLE TO THE DESERVING, AND VENGEFUL TO THE UNWORTHY.

Papyrus handles the shortcut pretty well. He stands stock-still as soon as Sans reaches through space and touches his lab, and doesn’t even blink until they’re both back in existence, surrounded by motes of dust hovering gently in the disturbed air and papers full of math scattered everywhere.

Alphys doesn’t handle it nearly as well, which is a little ridiculous when he thinks about it. How did she _think_ Sans was going to come check on her?

“Agh!” she shrieks, flinging a handful of schematics into the air.

“AGH?” shouts Papyrus, probably in solidarity.

“ _chill_ ,” says Sans, popping a handful of blue magic bubbles around Alph’s papers before they can settle on the pile and get lost. He flicks them onto the work surface while Alphys grabs at her chest.

“O-oh my gosh, Sans, don’t do that! You’re g-gonna give me a h-heart atta-- aaaa-- ack? Papyrus? Why is P-Papyrus here?”

Sans shrugs, already regretting his choices. Papyrus, on the other hand, shouts, “HELLO DOCTOR ALPHYS! I DIDN’T KNOW YOU KNEW SANS. THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT SANS! SO WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THEM! BECAUSE WE’RE BROTHERS!”

Alphys gives Sans a half-lidded, sideways look that speaks volumes. He shrugs again. “it’s been a morning.”

“Uh-huh. Well, y-you boys have f-fun with that. I’ll be over here, d-doing science and t-totally not listening,” Alphys says, one eyebrow ridge raised skeptically. That’s probably fair. Sans is not known for his forthrightness.

He’s known for his _hilarious jokes_.

“well, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate,” he reminds her. She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, so it’s his win.

“BROTHER! STOP! YOU CANNOT DISTRACT ME WITH AWFUL JOKES!”

Eh. Worth a shot. Sans sighs and pulls Papyrus into the corner farthest away from Alphys (and the broken machine) not out of any particular confidence that Alphys won’t listen-- with Papyrus, she really doesn’t have a choice-- but it’s the principle of the thing. He doesn’t want to have this conversation _at all_ , and he’s definitely not going to have it two feet away from his only… friend? Ally? _Co-worker?_ Alphys.

“right,” he starts, scraping his hand over his skull, “uh, this is kind of a long story. you might want to--”

Before he can even finish, Papyrus is already cross-legged on the floor, staring intently at him, his limbs butterflied out at absolutely absurd angles. “I LOVE STORIES,” he assures Sans blandly.

“heh, yeah buddy, i know,” says Sans, smile stretching. Maybe this won’t be _totally awful._

* * *

It’s totally awful.

“THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE,” Papyrus shouts, pacing in an extremely short circuit from wall to wall. With his stride, he only gets to take about one and half steps before he has to spin around and stomp in the other direction, but that doesn't seem to be discouraging him.

“uh, sorry?” Sans tries.

“NOT YOU,” he shrieks, waving a gloved hand impatiently. “THE HUMAN! HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY REJECT OUR FRIENDSHIP-- _MY_ FRIENDSHIP!-- AND DO SUCH HORRIBLE THINGS SO MANY TIMES?!? I KNEW THEY SEEMED FAMILIAR! BUT I NEVER IMAGINED THAT THEY WERE GOING DOWN SUCH A DANGEROUS PATH! AND! THIS! IS THE WORST TIMELINE!!!”

Sans isn’t actually sure if that’s true, although it’s certainly the most… uh… _invigorating_ loop in a while.

“THEY TRICKED ME!” he continues, a rare genuine scowl pulling his face into an actually scary configuration. Sans doesn’t love that expression, to be honest. Kind of regretting this whole _explain time anomalies and genocide to Pap_ plan. “I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, TOTALLY DUPED! JAPED! BAMBOOZLED! INTO BEING PUZZLE PARTNER WITH A FIEND! WHO KILLED!!! _MY BROTHER_!!!!!!”

Sans blinks slowly up at Papyrus, where he’s fuming at the wall as if it has personally offended him. (It’s pretty dusty. Might be that.) “i got better?”

Pap’s eye sockets s l o w l y turn down to stare at Sans. Judgmentally. Sans chuckles awkwardly and pulls his hood up over his skull, muttering, “tough crowd.”

“We just find your c-cavalier attitude about being b-brutally murdered a little-- uh, hy-hypocritical…” Alphys says loftily, still fiddling with the guts of the anomaly tracker.

“YES! THANK YOU!” Papyrus says, jabbing a gloved hand at Alphys, “ALSO, I FIND IT VERY UPSETTING THAT YOU HAVE WATCHED ME DIE SO MANY TIMES!”

Welp, here it comes. Can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it. “uh, heh, yeah. you, uh, you know me pap-- real, uh, real lazybones--”

“WHAT? NO!” Papyrus drops so abruptly that for a horrifying second all Sans can think is that the human somehow got _in the lab_ and Pap’s gonna be dust any second, but then his brother’s enormous stick arms are wrapping around him and pulling him close and his skull _tinks_ against Pap’s breastplate gently. He freezes, baffled. “I’M SO SORRY YOU HAD TO GO THROUGH THAT! IF I HAD KNOWN, I WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL! I WOULD NEVER WANT TO-- IF I-- IT WOULD BE TERRIBLE TO SEE YOU DIE EVEN ONCE, SANS!!! IF I HAD TO WATCH YOU DIE A MILLION BILLION TIMES I WOULD-- I-- WOULD DO SOMETHING VERY BAD!”

Sans flinches away from that thought-- he has, in fact, done _a lot_ of very bad, as the human can attest; necessary, but… bad-- and Pap squeezes him once before leaning back. Sans very definitely doesn’t make any kind of sound.

“None Of This Is Your Fault,” Papyrus says, as close to a normal speaking voice as he can get, his eye sockets all big and earnest, “And We’re Going To Fix It. You Don’t Have To Do Everything By Yourself.”

Sans is pretty sure if he tries words he’s going to _actually_ just have a sobbing breakdown, and nobody has time for that. He settles for just nodding blankly at his brother, his eye lights a little hazy and disoriented by all the… everything.

This is really not how he thought this would go.

“OKAY! EXCELLENT!” says Papyrus, rocketing back up to his full height, “DOCTOR ALPHYS! PLEASE DO A SCIENCE!”

Alphys glances up at Papyrus sideways, smirking a little bit, and holds up a hand. Each of her claws is decorated with a different tiny gear. She waggles them demonstratively. Papyrus looks duly impressed, although whether that’s because he realizes the gears are part of the anomaly tracker or because he thinks she’s starting a new avant-garde accessories trend is impossible to guess.

“S-science is happening,” she assures him, and turns back to the disassembled machine. “It m-might be productive to ch-check on the human’s progress, though. S-Sans, you know where the c-camera recordings are stored, r-right?”

He does know that, although he’s pretty sure it was a dead timeline that she actually showed him. Alphys just knows herself well enough to make an accurate guess at what previous versions of her have talked about, which isn’t really surprising. Also, he's pretty sure she can tell he's getting overwhelmed and is just giving him an out to go decompress, but she's not actually wrong on either count, so. He shrugs agreeably. “sure. keep an eye on alph, will you, pap?”

Papyrus nods cheerfully, and takes a long step over the pile of papers-- he gives them A Look, and Sans is about 70% sure he’s going to come back to a lab organized to Papyrus levels of cleanliness and structure-- to hover over Alphys’ shoulder and watch her work. Alphys gives him a slightly nervous look, but apparently even she isn’t immune to Pap’s innocent curiosity routine, because she just smiles at him unsteadily and turns back to meticulously resetting components.

“OH, SANS?” Papyrus says, twisting his spine awkwardly to look back at Sans without neglecting what he has apparently interpreted as his new “loom over Alphys while she does science” duty, “WHEN YOU FIND THE HUMAN? BE VERY CAREFUL. BUT ALSO? BE COMFORTING AND PLEASANT! LIKE THE MOON! HUMANS LIKE THAT! I’M SURE THIS IS ALL SOME KIND OF TERRIBLE MISUNDERSTANDING!”

Alphys is staring up at Papyrus’ skull like he’s speaking in a foreign language. Sans, who is pretty immune to Pap’s idea of analogies, just shrugs. “sure, bro. do my best.”

“I KNOW YOU WILL!” Papyrus assures him, with a blinding smile that he in no way deserves under the circumstances but sure isn’t going to turn down, “I BELIEVE IN YOU! GO DO GOOD CAMERA SCIENCE!”

He hears Alphys saying, “U-um, Papyrus, t-that’s not really what s-science--” as he reaches for her lab and rolls his eye lights at her enormous monitor as he steps out of the shortcut, smiling stupidly. So that’ll be her next half hour. Hopefully she can work and teach at the same time, especially since Pap is just going to cheerfully ignore anything she tells him that he doesn’t already agree with. At this point, Sans is pretty sure that Pap calling any field of study that doesn’t involve either a spatula or a spear “science” is his idea of a _very_ oblique joke.

He stares up at the monitor, skull canting to the side. Huh. Alphys usually leaves it locked to the human-- he’s pretty sure it was still tracking them when he was here before-- but it’s stalled on the cliffside west of Snowdin, just outside the cave to nowhere. There aren’t any cameras in there-- Alph tried to install one _several times_ , across a couple of early loops, but anything they left in there shorted out within minutes of being installed, and even when Sans took shortcuts in to retrieve the faulty equipment it would just be missing when he got there. They gave it up as a bad job ages ago. It wasn’t like there was really anything to monitor in there anyway, just a door that didn’t open-- and Sans wasn’t totally convinced that there was anything behind it anyway; nothing he could get a grip on for a shortcut, that was for sure-- and a couple of glowshrooms somehow displaced from Waterfall. If he had to guess, the whole room had come from Waterfall at one point, and somewhere in the alteration of the timelines (or in _whatever he couldn’t remember_ ) it had gotten misplaced. Anomalies were, _by nature_ , inconsistent. It wouldn’t really be a surprise if there had been some unpredictable, unrepeatable side-effects.

There was nothing interesting in there, so there wasn’t really any reason for the human to be inside. They’d never shown much interest in it before-- just ducked in and ducked right back out again when it became obvious there wasn’t anything to kill.

Sans clicks through the controls on the monitoring suite, pulling up the records, and shuffles them back to the tile puzzle. He watches it all play out again at twice-speed, leaning on the console.

The camera can’t see the soul matrix’s eyes activating, or whatever it actually does to the tiles. Alph does have a diagnostic for all the puzzles she’s designed on her terminal, though. Sans moseys to her desk, keeping his eye lights on the monitor, and taps her password into the keyboard with one hand, absently. Pulls up the readings for the Snowdin tiles. A quick scan reveals the usual processing error-- technically the single-lane solution is an error code for debugging-- and then, as he’s watching, the human taps their fingernail against the closest tile one more time, and the puzzle sputters and switches. Checking the diagnostic suggests a _remote boot_ , an injection of a completely new random data set, and then some kind of shortcut that skipped the usual process to just dump a completed puzzle into the system.

He flicks a hand at the camera controls to pause the playback-- extremely frivolous use of magic, Sans is sure Pap would be disgusted-- and double-checks the diagnostic. Yeah, that’s… definitely what it says.

Which _might_ be possible, if the human had been at _the puzzle terminal_ , and had actually written a single line of code at any point, and also, while they were at it, been a computer science wizard. But they hadn’t. They’d tapped a single fingernail against a single tile. So what the _hell_.

Sans taps his phalanx against the keyboard pensively, light enough not to depress the keys-- part of him really wants to dig into this, but he’s got other things to worry about and computer science is not actually one of his areas of expertise anyway-- and finally flicks the recording back to play.

They solve the puzzle-- thumbs up, what was that even about, they’ve got the least consistent communication patterns he’s ever seen-- and get their customary GOOD JOB from Pap. The recording of Sans shortcuts away-- he plays it back a couple of times, squinting at the grainy image of himself, but there’s no indication of anything _weird_ happening, so maybe whatever reaction his soul is having to their proximity is psychosomatic, it didn’t start until after the whole _tearing him apart at the atomic level_ thing-- and he expects to see them proceed.

That’s not what they do.

They _stand there_ , just beyond the finished puzzle, exactly where he left them. Still staring at the empty space he occupied. They don’t shuffle, or look around, or even _shiver_ as far as he can tell-- it’s too cold for them to be wandering around in that ratty sweater, which is a thought he could have kept on not having and been a lot happier about-- they barely even blink. For-- he checks the time stamps-- _ten minutes._

By that point he had already taken Papyrus through the shortcut to his lab. What are they _waiting_ for?

And then abruptly, without anything that he can see-- or that _the cameras_ can see, which is unfortunately an important distinction-- changing, they lurch forward and continue on the path as if nothing had happened. As if they _hadn’t_ just stalled like a computer trying to run too many simultaneous processes.

(Theory: it’s a robot. A real, _actual_ robot, or a very elaborate shell like Alphys’ pet project. Likely? No. But at this point, he’s not throwing anything out without conclusive evidence.)

He’s about to speed the recording up to x3 and resign himself to watching them fall off the ice bridge puzzle a dozen times-- they’re really _very bad_ at locomotion-- when he has to abruptly pause the footage instead, scrubbing rapidly back and forth between frames, eye lights flicking disbelievingly from point to point.

Because they are _absolutely_ using shortcuts. _A bunch_ of shortcuts, really short jumps, from tile to tile. One frame they’re on the landing, the next frame they’re standing flat-footed on a tile; next frame, next tile; on and on, one after another, until they land perfectly straight on the final switch and the bridge extends.

He scrubs through it three times before he’s convinced it’s not a recording error.

That’s not-- this isn’t something they just learned to do, or picked up somewhere, or worked out by watching _him_ do it somehow. They know _exactly_ what they’re doing, and there’s no hesitation or uncertainty, no doubt that they’ll come out exactly where they intend to. They look more comfortable using shortcuts than _Sans_ is, and he’s been using them for the entire breadth of his contiguous memory.

So why have they been taking the usual _linear path_ through the Underground, one step at a time, like they can’t just cut straight to the Throne Room and take care of business. ( _Wow_ this is going to make stalling them at the Hall of Judgement impossible, he has _no_ plan for this. Nothing. They’re all doomed.) Why _do Papyrus’ puzzles_ if they can just skip straight over them. 

Apparently even in his absence they are dedicated to fucking with him, though, because after displaying _that_ unexpected ability, they just step out onto the ice and slip-slide their way into a little ball of dizzy misery across the bridge. He kind of wants to pick them up and dump them on his couch and make them drink hot chocolate, which-- nope. That’s just residual brothering from when Paps was tiny and badly-coordinated and the human can’t have it no matter how many times they stumble into snow banks, _like a tiny helpless babybones_. He’s not falling for it. It’s some kind of protective camouflage to distract people from how murdery they are.

Or how murdery they _could_ be, at least. They spend fifteen minutes in an encounter with G.D.-- Sans is irritated to note that the cameras don’t pick up the soul matrix even in the middle of an encounter, so it’s definitely something outside normal expressions of reality-- expressionlessly petting him until his shift ends and he bounds joyfully off to Grillby’s, leaving them behind looking vaguely dissatisfied with something. Or maybe he’s just projecting again. They’re easy to project on, what with the whole no emoting thing they have going on.

They stall again halfway across the “Gauntlet of Deadly Terror”, which is a little more unsettling than last time, if he’s honest, if only because he’s very familiar with their habit of slipping and falling and collapsing in general. “In the middle of a rope bridge” doesn’t seem like a great place for somebody that prone to gravity-testing to linger, even if they _can_ shortcut. Especially since there’s been no evidence so far that they’d actually do it in an emergency.

Not that they need to. Anomaly. Time would just reset. So there’s no reason for him to worry about them _anyway_. Which is great. Because he isn’t.

Again, nothing visible to the cameras happens when they decide to move on.

They walk straight into Snowdin without hesitation, and then _stop_.

Sans plays it back a couple of times to confirm. It’s not a stall. They aren’t just going lax and blank and eerily unmoving while they… wait, or process, or do whatever happens when their program/mind/soul(?) hangs. They _lock up_ , their whole body going rigid. That’s _fear_.

He lets the recording play forward, tapping his phalanges on the console restlessly. Still nothing happening on their face, but he doesn’t know another way to interpret _that_ body language. Fight, flight, and _freeze_ are the three responses to a threat. So far the human-- especially the knifey one-- has seemed to favour option number one, with the other one hopping back and forth between fight and flight apparently at random. He’s never seen them react like this before, and especially not to _Snowdin_. What, did they forget people usually live here when they aren’t being frantically evacuated a few steps ahead of a psychotic murderer?

Actually, that’s not impossible now that he thinks about it. It’s been _a while_ since they’ve done a loop that hasn’t involved wholesale mass murder.

One of the townspeople-- Butterscotch, Sans drags up out of his memories, feeling vaguely guilty about forgetting it despite the fact that he technically hasn’t talked to her in at least a couple of years at this point, and her brother Cinnamon-- ducks down to talk to the human because she’s never read a room correctly in her life. To Sans’ astonishment, this does not end in the human either bolting or attacking. It just breaks them out of their panic, and they default back to “empty doll” configuration. Which, while atypical, isn’t the worst result.

The mic on the cameras isn’t enough to pick up the conversation in the middle of Snowdin-- too much ambient noise-- but Sans can see that the human’s actually responding verbally for once. File that under: more confusing evidence of the human’s communication limits.

After a couple of minutes, possibly just to startle him, the human must hear something they don’t like, because they stare at Butterscotch for a long minute and then-- with weird intensity, one feature at time, _clearly_ intentionally and by choice rather than out of any instinct-- they pull their face into a frown. It takes them a little bit to get there, but it’s a pretty normal expression once it’s actually in place. Mildly disapproving frown. Pretty normal response to Butterscotch as far as Sans can remember.

Sans is remembering vaguely why he doesn’t like Butterscotch-- something about her brother and his brother-- when she points the human at his house.

In her defense, there’s no way she can know that this a potentially murderous human. But. _Seriously_.

At least nobody’s home. Actually, Sans checks the time stamps again, and this was about the time he was wrapping up his explanation to Pap. So technically they’re all in the lab. Which means nothing happens. It’s fine. It’s not even like the human doesn’t already know where his house is-- they have occasionally left Papyrus alone long enough to find out-- but his bones still itch watching them examine the wreath on the front door.

They pet the door.

...is this about the thing with Greater Dog, or?

Then they nearly brain themselves trying to turn around and look at MK. (One of these days, Sans is going to make some kind of effort to keep MK from diving headfirst into business that a) doesn’t involve him and b) is likely to get him killed. But that would require effort, and just-- who has the time. ...well, technically, _Sans_ has the time, infinitely, unless the human actually does just eat all of existence this loop, but. He’s… lazy.) There’s. Definitely a trend developing. Doesn’t like being startled. _Consistently falls over_ when startled.

On the other hand, they don’t actually _talk_ to MK at all, going back to gestures, but neither they nor MK seem at all confused, so presumably they’re following the conversation just fine. So. _Another_ confusing data point vis-a-vis communication.

MK darts away abruptly, but he doesn’t look alarmed, so presumably there weren’t any threats involved. Not that MK is the most perceptive kid Sans has ever met. The human doesn’t pursue him, though, just turns back to the house and pets the door a few more times (???) before turning and walking right out of town.

Sans speeds up the footage again, although he doesn’t really need to-- they shortcut through their backtracking in a series of weirdly short hops. Why they don’t just take a shortcut straight to their destination, he has no idea. (Unless they _can’t_. But the only thing that’s ever stopped Sans from taking a shortcut is the barrier and anomalies like the door in the cave to nowhere, which he’s pretty sure just doesn’t go to wherever it used to go, creating a tangle that even the shortcuts can’t cut through. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to just reach out and grab wherever they’re going.)

And there they go, down the cliff, to the mouth of the cave. And into it. And then nothing.

He speeds through the remaining footage at x5 speed, but they never re-emerge. The recording catches up to real-time, and they’re still in there. Unless they took a shortcut to somewhere else the cameras don’t record-- the Ruins, maybe. If the short jumps were just diversions, to suggest that they aren’t capable of longer shortcuts, that might make sense. They know about the cameras.

Well. The knifey one and the other one know about the cameras.

Whatever he’s dealing with right now… _might_ know about the cameras. It’s not like the knifey one and the other one didn’t share skills, and probably memories. Whether _this one_ does… he’s not sure.

Sans clicks his phalanges sequentially on the console again-- one, two, three, four-- staring at the monitor. The human doesn’t emerge.

He told Pap he’d do his best.

Yeah, okay.

He pulls himself through space to the cliff. (He doesn’t think about how _inconvenient_ it’s going to be if the human really can do this exactly the same way he can. There just _isn’t a contingency_ for that, and he’s not thinking about it.)

They’re inside, way at the back of the cave, in a little huddle in front of the door to nothing.

(He doesn’t think about how _small_ they look when they do that. He doesn’t.)

Apparently his timing is impeccable even when the loop’s gone highly off-the-rails, because just as he’s stepping into the tunnel, they stand up-- gracelessly, but without alarm, so they probably haven’t realized he’s here-- and turn towards the light.

He wouldn’t call whatever’s on their face an _expression_. That would be overselling it. But there’s a… _cast_ , a _quality_ to it that’s both eerily familiar and weirdly unexpected.

Determination.

“hey kiddo,” he says, and really hopes they aren’t about to start their next murder spree with him, “thought we oughta have a chat.”


	13. recoherence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Fifteen of _in action how like an angel_.

Sans pays very close attention to his soul as the human approaches. At about six feet out, it starts to feel heavy, and every step after that is an exercise in self-control as he feels it _melting_ , dripping and sliding down his bones. He’s sure as hell not pulling it out to investigate while they’re standing right in front of him-- he’s not _that_ suicidal, and Alphys can shut up about it-- but it takes just about every ounce of fake nonchalance he’s cultivated over however long he’s been trapped in this nightmare not to clutch his ribcage compulsively. If prior experience is any indicator of present circumstances, he should be _fine_. There was no actual damage the last time this happened. It’s _probably_ psychosomatic. He’s literally never heard of anything like this happening before, _even to him_ , but that doesn’t mean it’s _not_ psychosomatic. It’s not like there have been a lot of studies in the effects on the soul of _post-dusting_ exposure to trauma triggers. And, frankly, it’s not even really like he _dusted_ last time, he was-- that was something else, he doesn’t know what that was. Bad news, is what that was.

Uncharted territory. Hooray.

He could write a paper, but Alphys is the only person who might read it, so why bother. He’ll just let her read his notes some time if the results are interesting and this doesn’t kill him permanently.

For the first time, Sans becomes actually _aware_ that the human doesn’t have a weapon. (Not that it needs one. But.) By this time, the knifey one is either stubbornly still using the toy knife, or they’ve pulled a boxing glove out of the boxes. Sans isn’t sure which is worse. The stabbing is bad. The beating isn’t great either. Dealer’s choice.

Even the other one always at least has a stick. They don’t usually _use_ it. But they have it.

This one doesn’t have anything, except a broken cell phone presumably still in their pockets. They walk right up to him, bare-handed, and look at him solemnly. And that’s all.

It doesn't matter. Sans has seen what this one can do. Sans has _experienced_ what they can do. They don’t need a weapon to hurt anyone. They don’t need a weapon to hurt _everyone_. They’re _dangerous_.

(... but it does matter.)

They’re a lot closer than he would really like, but lazy nonchalance doesn’t really allow for taking a step back to maintain your personal space. So that’s his fault for choosing ‘laid-back doofus’ as his default presentation. His soul feels like a puddle. He scratches his distal phalanges against the tiny bones of his palm restlessly, hidden in his hoodie, catching and pulling at seams between his bones.

“Speak thus,” they say, so apparently they’re talking for now. Kind of. _After a fashion._

“... ok. let’s start with that,” he says blandly, “this language we’re speaking right now, is this, or is this _not_ , your native language?”

They tilt their head _very slightly_ to one side. Picked that up from the dogs, maybe?

And then they babble some _total nonsense_ that he doesn’t follow at all.

“oh boy,” he sighs, scraping his phalanges over his face, rolling his eye lights. This again. Every time he thinks they might _not_ have an aphasia, they pull this out. He’s starting to think it’s intentional. “this is gonna be a thing.”

“Vague,” they say, to torture him.

“they think _i’m_ vague,” he mutters under his breath, “fine. let’s try _extremely blunt_. either you’re _really bad_ at communicating, or whatever you’re trying to say is _incomprehensible_.”

They pause-- same as the recordings, that dull isolated _non-action_ \-- and a thing happens that he’s never really noticed before. Maybe he’s just never been close enough when it happened. The cameras certainly didn’t pick it up.

Their eyes are always kind of affectless, but they track motion well and there’s clear intelligence there. So he’s not sure what he’s looking at when their eyes go flat and glassy. There’s no awareness in them at all. They look… well, they look dead. He’s seen their eyes empty out like this enough times to recognize it. This is exactly what their eyes do when the last electrical impulse fades from their brain, in that microsecond before the anomaly pulls them back to try again.

He does not like the implications here.

It only lasts for a second-- maybe less-- and then their eyes sharpen again, in the exact same moment that they say, “Frisk reports: words are hard, Sans is a jerk, doing great.”

Which, ok, _is_ more coherent.

“uh-huh,” he says, distracted, mostly watching their eyes, “who’s frisk, is that you? do you understand how personal pronouns work?”

He’s betting they don’t know how personal pronouns work. Or conjunctions and prepositions, while he’s at it. (Theory: their actual mother tongue is the hand signs the other one uses occasionally, and they’re figuring out spoken word as they go along. That would explain some of the awkward construction and lack of certain parts of speech. Except that this one _doesn’t do that_. So who knows.)

“Not Frisk. Frisk: human child, red soul, vessel,” they say, raising one hand like an awkward marionette to gesture at their… at… their _puppet’s_... face.

Oh.

Of course.

 _Of course_ that’s what’s happening.

It’s not like he didn't know that. Abstractly. In a theoretical way. One human body, two (three?) human beings. He knew this. This isn’t new information.

The knifey one always handled like somebody who wasn’t totally comfortable with how their body worked. _This one_ can barely go ten feet without falling over.

Having it confirmed kind of feels like being kicked in the chest anyway.

“oh good,” he says, distantly, “we’re getting somewhere. is that-- uh-- _jeez_ \-- how many, uh, human children are we talking about here.”

How does this even _happen_ , though, is the thing. Humans can’t absorb each other’s souls. He’s pretty sure it would have been mentioned somewhere if that was a thing. That’s not a thing.

And what is he supposed to _do_ about it?

Is this even his job?

Well, it’s definitely not the _literal child’s_ job, so probably.

This whole doing his best thing is turning out to be a real unpleasant experience.

“Primary: Frisk. Red soul. Host of vessel. Secondary: self. Ophan. Possession of vessel. Tertiary: fractured. Unhuman. Decohered from vessel,” recites whichever one is currently in charge. Not the primary one, apparently.

“great. ok. so there _are_ three of them. uh, three of you,” he checks, _really hoping_ that it’s just three.

Not that he really has a plan for dealing with three, but he doesn’t really want to find out they’ve got a _hive_ in there or something. There are limits, surely, to how many people you can squish into one tiny human body.

“False,” they say, “Singular human child. Only primary. Secondary: ophan. Tertiary: unhuman.”

Oh, _great_. That’s. _Yep_.

What does “unhuman” even _mean_.

Distantly it occurs to him that his eye lights have gone out. Wonder when that happened. Whatever. He flicks them back on with a snap of his phalanges, hooks his fingers in his eye socket absently. Taps _one, two, three, four_ over and over again on the inside of his own skull. It reverberates with reassuring regularity.

How is this his life, honestly. How does his life get progressively weirder and less manageable. Surely there’s some kind of threshold for this kind of thing, the world can only handle so much incomprehensible nonsense before it reaches saturation.

What is he talking about, Sans is a _quantum physicist_ , the incomprehensibility is infinite.

“right,” he says, “sure. so the kid is… frisk. and you’re… ophan?”

“False,” they say, because apparently just saying no would be too easy, they have to frame it like a _result_ instead of an answer. And then they spit out another ramble of disconnected sounds, all of which are _technically_ words but none of which make sense next to each other, ending in what he _thinks_ is supposed to be this one’s name. Not that “Sahaquiel” is the kind of thing he would name somebody, and it’s not exactly what he was expecting after “Frisk”, but he’s named after a _font_ , he’s not gonna throw stones on that one.

“... kind of a mouthful.”

… ok, one stone.

So sue him.

“Most Tongues of Babel in mouths,” they-- the kid-- _Sahaquiel_ says, which. He’s not sure if that’s… a joke? A mangled idiom? A genuine misunderstanding?

“... yep.”

Their eyes go blank again for the _slightest_ moment-- what is that, remembering? processing? … _consulting_?-- and then they say, “Some Tongues of Babel in hands.”

Something goes abruptly sharp in the back of his skull-- _can’t remember that_ \-- and he flinches hard enough that he probably scrapes a few millimeters of bone away from the inside of his skull with his own phalanges. Before he can even get around to regretting his life choices-- _so many_ of his life choices-- the human _lunges_ at him and he freezes. Which is an incredibly stupid response, he’s been in this _exact_ situation literally hundreds of times before-- ok, admittedly it’s always been in the Hall and it’s always been in an encounter-- and he knows _exactly_ how badly it goes to let them hit him. But as they cross the little space that remains his soul _chills_ , as if he’d shoved it under a waterfall, and he _can’t move_.

But they don’t hit him.

They wrap both of their tiny little hands around his wrist and lean back, dig their heels in and _pull_ with all the might in their tiny, tiny body. They’ve got just enough weight and momentum to pull his hand forward a couple of feet. And then they just… stop, hanging off his arm, and squint up at him over their clenched hands. They aren’t even holding him particularly hard.

As soon as they touch him-- something _ringing_ just beyond his ability to hear it, distant bells, what _is_ that-- his soul snaps back to its normal shape and orientation, resonating faintly with some music he can’t quite hear, as if nothing had ever been wrong with it. Which. Is true? _Maybe_?

To his astonishment, there is the ghost of an actual expression on their face.

_Concern._

“Stop,” they say firmly.

(He is _vividly_ reminded of Papyrus doing this exact _same thing_ , only louder, what, fifteen years ago? Longer? Before time got all tangled up, anyway, sometime in that disconnected haze of things he can and can’t remember. Pap didn’t like the noise that bone-on-bone made. He was _convinced_ that it was going to hurt Sans. Which it wasn’t. He knew what his limits were. But Pap didn’t like it. So he stopped.

For a while.

He stopped for a while.)

After a moment, when they don’t make any sign that they’re going to let go, he very slowly pulls his wrist back. The human rocks gently forward-- he is dimly impressed that they haven’t tipped over yet, and keeps his motions as smooth and slow and predictable as possible, because unlike Papyrus (who can practically catch himself out of midair like a cat if he loses his balance) this particular tiny limpet attached to him right now is _not great at legs_ \-- until they’re back on their own two feet, still holding on. They _very reluctantly_ let him have his arm back, and curl up their fingers in the edges of their sweater, which seems to be just what they default to now that they aren’t occupied with the cell phone all the time. 

Sans processes this for a minute, eye lights flicking between his own (not ripped off) arm and whatever’s piloting the human right now, blinking up at him with solemn suspicion.

“... sure,” he settles on finally, hiding his hand in his hoodie and finally surrendering to the instinct to lean just a little bit further away. He deserves it, ok, that was weird and he’s not sure what to think about it. This is _of its own admission_ not actually a human child. He would really, maybe, prefer if it didn’t act like one.

 _Focus_ , Sans.

“ok. let’s… there’s a lot to, uh, unpack here,” he is a _master_ of understatement, “so we’re gonna prioritize: murder, how are you feeling about that? uh, any and all of you.”

“Covenant,” they say after another dead-eyed moment of maybe-contemplation, “Of Frisk. Null harm monsters.”

He pauses to let that sink in. Really, uh, _process_ it. Yeah, no, that’s. Nope. ‘Bout as believable as if they’d told him they were a collection of temmies in a striped sweater. _Less_ , even, that sounds like something the temmies might do. 

“uh-huh. great job you’ve been doing with that.”

They do the little head-tilt again. Same angle, same degree. He doesn’t _think_ it’s intentionally manufactured, it doesn’t look… _experimental_ the same way the frown they tried out on Butterscotch did, but it’s also clearly not… instinctive. On some level, _all of this_ is learned behaviour. Which, _yeah_ , is kind of true of body language in general, but not… like this.

Maybe they were raised by moldsmals.

He’s had more outrageous theories.

“Error. Penitence,” they say, looking and sounding about as penitent as a wall. “Yet! Thus also! Protect lilim! Null harm!”

They make a two-handed “see!” gesture at his pockets-- his hands, he thinks; “stop”, yeah, yeah-- that looks straight out of the Papyrus playbook. Probably _literally_ lifted from observation. So that’s interesting.

Also: what the hell is a “lilim” supposed to be? What are these, loanwords? Acronyms? Nonsense?

 _Also_ also: interesting that “null harm” apparently doesn’t mean “don’t _do_ harm” but “don’t _allow_ harm.”

He’ll say again: they’re not doing great on that front. But. Interesting.

The human doesn’t actually _fidget_. But they do start to look very faintly _nervous_. For probably the first time, they’re actually searching his skull, trying to get a read on his reaction to this. 

“...the Great Papyrus? Null harm?” they suggest, with a slight waver that’s very uncharacteristic.

Sans almost raises a brow bone. _The Great Papyrus_? ...is that what they call him? Holy shit? That’s adorable? Pap would lose his mind?

Nope! Stop that immediately. Pap is staying in the lab, the human is _not_ going to lab, never again the twain shall meet on this particular loop _at least_. Just because they haven’t killed him _currently_ doesn’t mean Sans is keen to test their limits on that particular subject.

( _The Great Papyrus_ , though. Literally nobody calls him that. _Not even Sans calls him that_. He kind of loves it? What a _mess_.)

“right. you know what? doesn’t matter,” Neither the question of how murdery they feel, nor why they call his brother _the Great Papyrus_. “we both know i can’t stop you. so. whatever you’re _looking for_? we can try that. without murder.”

This is kind of Sans’ whole game plan at this point. It’s not. His best plan ever. Mostly it isn’t a plan. Mostly it amounts to throwing himself and the rest of existence on the mercy of a thing that has not indicated that it _has_ a whole lot of mercy, and hoping for the best. _Hey, have you tried **not** killing everyone?_ is not a super compelling argument.

But they’ve heard all of his arguments hundreds of times before. He’s dunked on them literally dozens of times, which-- that’s really not a trap that should work more than once? He can only assume they get bored.

And they can literally just _skip him_ now, which means all his existing plans are just… done.

So he’s trying this.

Help me help you. Essentially.

He is not hugely optimistic about it, but.

Doing his best.

And so on.

To his _absolute surprise_ , they nod agreeably, an expression of vague satisfaction drifting on to their face for a couple of seconds. As if this was _their_ desired outcome, not his.

...you know what, gift horses.

“alright. great. next order of business,” he just barely stops himself from _clapping_ like he’s in a _business meeting_ trying to move things along, what the hell Sans, get a grip, “the human-- the, uh, red soul-- is frisk? and i’m _not_ talking to frisk right now.”

Better to clarify these things when everything that comes out of their mouth has a 50/50 chance of being uninterpretable garbage.

“Sahaquiel,” they say crisply. So he definitely didn’t mishear that.

“... yep. and you’re… yeah, i don’t know what you are. the, uh, thing with all the eyes. can i assume that’s you?”

He really, really hopes that's what he’s talking to right now, which is. Not a thing he thought he would ever be hoping for, but here they are. If it’s _a thing that can be talked to_ maybe they can avoid the eating of the universe yet.

“Yes?” they say, but they don’t sound particularly confident. “Ophan.”

Oh good, a _new_ configuration of nonsense syllables. “that word doesn’t mean literally anything to me.”

“Angel,” they say, and his mind just kind of… stops.

That’s not…

There’s no way.

“angel,” he says, as if he might have _misheard them_.

“Yes?”

“prophecy, delta rune, free-the-underground… that angel,” he asks, genuinely unsure what answer he wants here.

They’ve never trotted _this_ out before.

People have _talked about it_. People always _talk about it_. Sans has never exactly bought in. He’s pretty sure they’re just… an irregularly murderous child. Got a knife. Not a lot of divine intervention necessary there.

Although.

 _To be fair_.

This one. Does not. Have a knife.

“Uncertainty,” they say, calmly, as if this is not an absolutely wild thing to tell someone.

“which part?”

“All.”

“is there _another_ angel you might be?” he says, getting _probably_ a little hysterical.

“No?” they say, sounding decreasingly confident with every second. His response is probably not helping.

Dial it down, maybe.

Take a deep breath.

Count something.

Just numbers going up infinitely will do.

The thing is: they _might_ be.

The knifey one? The other one? Whichever one of them is Frisk? Maybe not! Like he said. Irregularly murderous child with a knife. Nothing mystical about it! Just a jerk! Just a jerk with weird time powers he can’t explain or interfere with! Whatever!

#NormalQuantumThings!

But _this one_. Sahaquiel. _Popped the lid off reality._ Like it was made of plastic wrap. And then just casually put it back. _No big deal._

_Maybe a little divine whatever happening there._

He had always kind of assumed it was metaphorical, the whole angel concept. You call a kid “sweetheart”, you don’t mean it literally. You call a saviour “angel”, you don’t _necessarily_ mean it literally.

But sure. You _could_ mean it literally.

This should probably have occurred to him before this exact moment. Right? He should have seen this coming.

They literally walk out of the Ruins. There’s a delta rune _right above the door_.

The whole wings and eyes and math and light and rotating rings thing, he can even kind of see how you simplify that whole experience down to “a circle, some fluffy shapes, and some triangles” when someone asks you to make a symbol for it.

How do you even define something like this. How do you test it. How do you _record_ it.

Is this what alchemists felt like when they realized that magic _did_ have scientific properties that could be studied? Simultaneously validated and _fucking terrified_ by the enormity of their realization, even though it had always been true and they had just been too stupid to see it? And like they might accidentally destroy the universe if they weren’t sufficiently nice to their discovery?

… probably.

Alphys is going to lose her mind.

 _He’s_ going to lose his mind.

Absolutely nobody has time for this breakdown.

Get it together, Sans.

“right. okay. you’re the angel. that makes as much sense as anything does, i guess.”

 _To be honest_ , he was hoping for the puppeteer to be something mundane and manageable like, oh, dissociative identity disorder wrapped around a time anomaly. He might even take monster-human soul fusion gone wrong. There was probably even precedent for that somewhere, if you dug deep enough into the records.

These were problems with solutions.

Tests. Experiments. Supervised hugs from Papyrus. That kind of thing.

But no, of course they’re the angel.

 _Of course_ they are.

They look vaguely pleased with this resolution. He guesses that’s fair.

“and the other one,” he asks, not _really_ sure he wants to know, but he’s here, it’s data-gathering time, he doesn’t have to like it, “uh, tertiary? who’s that?”

That microexpression slides right off their face to be replaced by blank dead-eyed emptiness again. It’s unsettling, is what it is.

“Frisk reports: Chara,” they say, zoning back in, which is pretty strong evidence for that being _consulting_. Angel’s driving, human kid’s giving backseat direction. Interesting. “Unhuman remnant. Decohered from vessel.”

They’re looking down at their own shadow, pooled beneath their feet and shifting gently in the dim blue light of the cave, with sharp-eyed interest. He glances at it. Nothing special. _Implications_ , though.

“decoherence,” he says, “as in, _lost information._ ”

Please let this not be another word salad moment.

They _light up_ , their whole face going briefly, shockingly animated with startled delight. It fades almost immediately, but he didn’t imagine that. _Somebody_ in that body is _very_ excited about quantum physics. From the lack of check-in with the kid, Sans is guessing it’s the angel.

He very much can't believe he's got something in common with the angel.

He double, extra can't believe that it's _fucking adorable_.

“Yes!” they say, with a lot more enthusiasm than he’s used to from _any_ of them. He still wouldn’t call it _excited_ by normal standards, but for them it’s practically a shriek of delight. “Weak entanglement, wave collapse. Human linear prior. Isolation pain. Possibility restoration uncertain. Thus: retain.”

He squints at them dubiously. That mostly made sense.

Human _linear prior_. Gotta get them some prepositions and conjunctions, _absolutely got to_. Still, he’s pretty sure that’s Angel for “was human once”, hence “unhuman”. Got it.

The rest is… actually surprisingly cogent.

Now, how you attach a _dead human’s soul_ to a _living human’s body_ he doesn’t know. How you even get that system to be _coherent_ in the first place. Jeez.

“you’re somehow holding on to _decoherent_ quantum information-- by which i’m pretty sure you mean a human soul, or whatever’s left over after it dissipates, and i have no idea where you just find one of those lying around-- on the off-chance you can _recohere_ it?”

Decoherence is the process of literally losing information out of a improperly secured quantum system into the environment that interfered with it. Entropy, essentially, by observation. The system can’t just _decide_ to keep holding on to that information after decoherence sets in. When the wave collapses, it’s _not a wave_ anymore.

If there was somehow another soul attached to the human, and it became decoherent with that system and degraded into the environment, it shouldn’t still really even _be_ a soul.

But what does he know, he’s talking to the angel apparently.

“Recoherence with system undesired outcome,” they say blandly, like it’s actually an option and they just _don’t like it_ , “Alternate solutions sought. Acceptable alternative: translation to desired environment. Vault of Heaven.”

… ok, he probably should have seen this coming.

If there is a literal angel, it had to come from somewhere.

 _Still_.

“vault of heaven,” he mutters to himself, “of course.”

File that under: esoterica to bother Gerson about sometime.

On the other hand, this means he’s not actually dealing with three people in one body, so much as he’s dealing with two people in one body and the hanger-on _ejected_ from the body. If the decoherent soul is the knifey one-- which he’s going to tentatively assume is the case, given that it’s Frisk who “reports” and apparently put the (questionably effective) “null harm” clause into effect-- he’s technically already in a better position than he was last loop.

A less comprehensible loop, and still not a _totally non-violent one_ , but he can’t have everything.

He’ll take limited temporary murder over genocide, thanks.

“Covenant of Frisk: help monsters,” they say, head-tilting, “Remnant priority low.”

Oh, dealing with the murder child’s ghost is _low priority_ is it.

Sure.

“ _help monsters_ ,” he says, because they’ve gotten way off track, actually, he had a plan here, kind of, “and what exactly does that look like. what’re you trying to _accomplish_ here, exactly.”

Their eyes do the thing. So _apparently_ this is a Frisk question.

 _That’s_ interesting.

… uh.

… going on a little long there, actually.

Sans scans their face uneasily. Nothing going on. They really, very much _do_ look dead-- slack, empty, only held upright by, what, habit?-- and it’s a lot more obvious now that it’s not just a split-second flash. No one home. Wherever Frisk and Sahaquiel have these conversations, it isn’t _really_ in the human body. Or it’s so deep in it that nothing surfaces.

They still aren’t shivering.

He’s not sure they’re _breathing_.

They’re breathing, right?

… if they died, time would jump back to an anchor.

…

He snaps his phalanges in front of their eyes.

Nothing.

“uh, you gonna--”

They hiss at him. Or he thinks that’s what they’re trying to do. The sound they actually make is a kind of breathy hum, but there’s-- _underneath_ that, there’s--

~~s a h a q u i e l~~

\--something _familiar_ \--

\-- something deeper, an almost subsonic growl, like the crack and moan of icebergs melting, and the rhythmic tolling of a glacially slow bell, ringing, _very far away_ \--

And then it’s over.

That is not a sound that a human child can make.

It lasted maybe half a second. He’s not sure he actually heard anything.

There is a non-zero possibility that he’s finally, _genuinely_ losing it.

There’s also a non-zero possibility that he just irritated the angel and he should be grateful this was the worst he got for it.

He’s not sure which of these in the better option.

Either way, he should probably just… let them have their conversation (?) and stay out of it. Deal with whatever the aftermath is when they’re finished. That’s. Yeah. He’s gonna do that.

He huddles into his hoodie and waits.

Lots of practice with waiting.

At least it’ll be _very obvious_ if this ends in an anomaly event.

Actually, he wonders when they made an anchor last.

He would prefer not to have that conversation with Papyrus _again_.

Skip it next time, maybe.

(No, he should probably do it again. Right? Right. Doing his best. Right.)

Something changes, subtly, about the human’s face. Sans sharpens his attention immediately, but they don’t say anything. And their eyes are still very much _not here_. But something’s going on beneath the surface.

Not a great conversation maybe.

He thinks there might be tears building in the corners of their empty eyes.

( _Crying on command_. Seems increasingly like maybe _the exact opposite of that_.

 _Wow_ , he’s a jerk.)

Is this _Frisk_? Human kid seems like a more plausible crier than the angel. But. When the body switched hands before-- Frisk to Chara, Chara to Frisk, he supposes-- there was always an accompanying anomaly event. No event this time. And they still aren’t really… _inhabiting_ the body.

They abruptly drop like a rock, like somebody cut the strings on the puppet, soundless except for the impact of their thin limbs hitting the floor.

He takes it back. _That’s_ what they look like when they die.

It takes him a second to unswallow his soul, panic flooding his skull and whiting out any kind of _useful reaction_ , because they’re _dead_ and time _didn’t wind back_ , and that’s--

on the one hand, great

on the other hand, _literally a child_

\-- not how he expected his day to go.

“wh-- hey,” he chokes, finally, scrabbling forward to check on them.

Their eyes are open.

Their eyes are open, and _somebody’s inside them_.

(Oh, thank god.)

They blink up at him, not even looking particularly disoriented. (That’s maybe fair. They do fall over a lot. He should probably _acquire some chill_.)

“jeez,” he says, in what he sure _hopes_ is a normal and not panicking tone, “what was that about? you okay?” 

They appear to consider this for a minute, and their eyes flick dead-and-back so quickly he doesn’t even get a chance to worry about it again. “Flower,” they say, and he has to cast his mind back to what he actually _asked them_ in the first place. It’s been at least ten minutes. “Flower holds time.”

Oh.

Oh is _that_ how it is.

Got a little power struggle between the anomalies. Definitely two different sequences. All right.

“i’m familiar,” he says, and kind of regrets never following through on a plan from probably dozens of loops into the first sequence, about digging the little weed up and putting it in a pot in the lab to see if _that_ had any effect, “not a fan.”

“Seek flower,” Sahaquiel-- with those speech patterns, definitely Sahaquiel-- clarifies.

Which could mean… a _lot_ of things.

Some of which he doesn’t love.

They close their eyes. Somehow, that’s not actually an improvement over the emptiness. The emptiness is unsettling and weird, but he’s pretty sure it’s not-- _usually_ \-- a bad sign.

This, though. This looks familiar.

Depressingly familiar.

Seen-it-in-the-mirror familiar.

 _Resignation_.

“Halt flower command of time,” they whisper. 

Oh, look. They found a preposition. Good for them.

“Then, barrier,” they say, picking themselves up off the floor.

He watches them uneasily. This falling-over thing should probably be looked into. That’s not normal behaviour. Not that, you know, stuffing the angel inside a human body is a normal situation. Just. It’s probably not healthy.

Pap would probably try to feed them.

… actually, have they eaten _anything_ other than spaghetti?

… he doesn’t think they have.

Pap’s spaghetti, bless him, is not what Sans would call… _nutritious_.

Non-zero possibility that the kid’s got _low blood sugar_.

Among other things.

Well. One problem at a time.

“ok,” he says, and holds out a hand, “gonna need to do some research on that.”

They just look at him. He waggles his phalanges impatiently. “shortcut.”

… are they just ignoring him, or?

He sighs, and leans over far enough to snag their wrist.

( ~~s a h a~~ )

( ~~bells~~ )

“you’re kind of slow on the uptake for an angel,” he teases.

And _pulls_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s maybe boring? Conversations from two POVs are kind of uhhh… repetitive. But there are a few characterization notes and interesting things happening in Sans POV that aren’t accessible through _in action_ , so here it is. <3


	14. rallentando

There’s this pattern that gets stuck on loop in his skull sometimes--

a series of little ringing sounds, like tapping on a glass with the edge of a spoon, just this one short little rhythm that loops in and in and into itself;

sometimes it builds up in layers, fractal variations that-- he did a calculation on it once, for someone, but he _can’t remember_ why-- all derive out of the simple line of math that defines that basic pattern, rap-a-tap-tap rap-a-tap-tap

(and something much bigger, older, _different_ looming underneath that, some harmony of whispering strings that he can’t ever quite get a grip on, broken occasionally by a _crack_ that he thinks he should be able to feel in his bones, but it’s all so far away, so deep down, like the shadows of shapes under water, like something _very big_ that might open its eyes if he doesn’t watch it--)

if he hums it, his mouth tastes like ozone and petrichor

\-- and it’s getting louder all the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Oh hey look, Sans gets a playlist too. https://8tracks.com/sciosa/choirmate)


	15. recover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Sixteen of _in action how like an angel_.

The first thing they do, of course, is almost fall over.

He can’t even be surprised by it at this point, which does absolutely nothing to stop the moment of irrational heart-stopping panic when they stumble and list forward and look like they’re about to slam their face into his carpet. He yanks on their wrist harder than he really means to, harder than he probably should since they’re all made out of… meat and blood and whatever, and also full up on apparently well-meaning but still extremely ominous murder potential. But they sway back and neither collapse into a pile nor kill him in some horrifying new way for his insolence, so it’s fine. Probably.

He drops their wrist like it’s white hot, mumbles something about making themselves at home that he doesn’t really think about, and immediately makes a beeline for the kitchen.

First of all, he deserves coffee. It absolutely does not matter that it’s edging into the afternoon, because time is fake and Papyrus isn’t here to stop him.

Second of all, he has to feed this child immediately, the fainting thing is getting really alarming.

It occurs to him, right after he actually steps into the kitchen, that it has been… _a while_ since he’s been in it. And he’s not sure, actually, what they have right now.

Which is ridiculous. This is his kitchen, in his house. He lives here.

It’s just that his mornings lately have mostly been… he mostly doesn’t leave his room until he has to. He just kind of stares at his ceiling, fading in and out of half-sleep, until Pap tells him it’s “TIME FOR PATROL” and then he goes out to find the human and start everything over again. And by that point he just kind of… doesn’t come back to the house. Until he wakes up again.

So Sans can’t remember what they have in the kitchen. In his house. _That he lives in._

Spaghetti? Probably?

He vaguely recalls that he made a quiche? Did that happen? Actually happen, or just… temporarily happen?

He peels open the oven door just enough to glance inside. There’s an empty pie tin. He’s not sure if this confirms or refutes the possibility that he actually made anything. Maybe he made a pie instead. Maybe he just debated making something and then gave up and put an empty pie tin in the oven, for some reason. That seems like something he would do. Who knows, honestly. It would have been during the first sequence, and that’s all increasingly difficult to differentiate.

(But it’s not a _can’t remember that_ , sharp in the back of his skull kind of forgetting so it’s. Probably not important? Realistically, he should have been expecting memory confusion, if not total loss, well before now. He’s doing pretty good, if you look at it that way. So that’s how he’s choosing to look at it.)

You know what? Doesn’t matter. He can find out what’s in the kitchen. Memory is overrated anyway. Hands-on data collection is _much_ more, uh, productive.

He slams open cabinets without a whole lot of finesse, mostly because he’s annoyed but also because, as he opens more of them, he is realizing the truth. Which is that there is nothing in their kitchen.

Well. There’s glitter, and several stray bones that Sans recognizes as Papyrus’ attacks, and dry pasta noodles that might actually be building materials, Pap is kind of vague about that, and an unlabeled can that Sans absolutely does not trust, sitting in the shadowy corner of one cupboard. There’s a spider web over it, and the fact that Sans can’t actually see any spiders there right now does not change the fact that he is not going to interfere with that. If they want the mystery whatever, they can have the mystery whatever.

The fridge, when he flings that open without much optimism, is even worse.

It’s rows, and row, and rows of plastic containers, all with various “spaghettis”, neatly labelled in his brother’s extremely loud handwriting. He narrows his eye sockets at whatever “PURPLE SPAGHETTI” is and decides that he’s not going to risk it.

There is neither coffee, nor anything he would willingly eat or feed to someone. So that’s a great start.

“really, pap,” he mutters-- and resolves to maybe a little bit kill Undyne, at least once, because this is definitely her fault-- slamming the refrigerator closed and turning to give the kitchen another pointless once-over.

They followed him. There’s no actual reason for this be alarming, because he did say something about-- actually, no, he just said it was his house, but the sentiment… whatever-- and they’re just standing there vacantly staring at him. It is still, somehow, kind of alarming to turn around and have them just be there.

Sans has a sudden flash of sympathy for Alphys, considering how many times he has pulled that exact stunt on her.

“uh,” he say, intelligently.

They tilt their head in what is apparently now just part of their default body language compendium, and he _guesses_ it’s an improvement over the vacant staring, but not by much.

“The Great Papyrus? Where?” they ask, faintly plaintive, which is-- on the one hand-- a very fair question, since this is also Pap’s house; and on the other hand, _why do they call him that_.

They eat his spaghetti, if Alphys is to be believed, which she isn’t always but he can’t think of a good reason she’d bullshit him about _that_. They make his puzzles _harder_ , so that they can _solve them more_. They actively pursue his… company? They call him _the Great Papyrus_.

There is maybe an argument here that the angel stuffed into the human and their homicidal ghost parasite are better friends to Papyrus than literally, maybe, anyone he has ever known in his entire life. Including Undyne, who definitely means well and who is also, _absolutely_ , exacerbating the whole everything about Papyrus. Which, Sans loves him, but he is kind of a lot all the time, and she definitely makes it worse, dramatically reducing the chances that Pap will ever get any _other_ friends, who are perhaps not _also_ crazy, which is kind of the only hope Sans has for Papyrus ever getting, like, normal socialization under control, because Sans certainly can’t help with that. Except apparently this conglomerate of kids, who definitely want _something_ and do not seem at all deterred by the Papyrus Experience.

He’s not _ruling out_ that they want to sneak under his guard and murder him. Possibly in new and exciting ways that Sans really doesn’t want to think about or, you know, _visualize_. But it’s not the _only_ explanation, or even the only _plausible_ explanation, which is kind of a new thought and Sans isn’t sure where to go with that.

“maybe later,” he hedges, and then takes a shortcut past them because he is, fundamentally, a coward. He likes his personal space, thanks.

They bumble back out into the living room after a couple of seconds, so he taps on the banister to get their attention. It takes them, actually, a little longer than he expects to look up-- they kind of track their attention across the whole room on the way, instead of snapping directly to the sound, which is an interesting if not particularly _efficient_ way to respond to a surprise, but then they probably don’t have many… do angels have natural predators? Whatever, he’s getting sidetracked.

He jerks a thumb back at his bedroom. “research. books. don’t leave the house.”

And then he jumps directly to Grillby’s.

As soon as the smell of warm polished wood and alcohol and food and fire hits him, he realizes it’s been an equally long time since he’s actually been here-- since there’s been _anyone_ here-- and he kinda has to sit down.

“Woooooah, Sansy~!” coos Coni, as he collapses into the booth opposite her-- mostly just because it’s the closest to the door-- and lets his skull drop to the table with a dull thunk. The smell of fermented magic is, as usual, totally overpowering at her table, and he’s pretty sure if he stays here long enough she will dump her beer or scotch or whatever all over him by accident. She talks with her hands. It’s a problem. “Yoooou’re here early! S’so nice t’see you!”

“yep,” he says, because it’s not like Coni really needs help to have a conversation and it is, actually, just kind of nice to hear the sounds of _general life_ happening around him. 

Somewhere to his left, the dogs are playing cards and absolutely none of them are dead. Lesser Dog is whining that _he_ didn’t get pets, and Greater Dog is preening self-importantly. Grillby is polishing a glass for the hundredth time because he is an absolute neat freak and Sans can never, ever invite Grillby to his house, ever, or he and Papyrus will scour the place absolutely bare and start over from scratch. Someone is smacking the jukebox, and it is making a thin warbling sound for about three seconds at a time. Coni has been rating every “hot guy” in Snowdin, and somehow Grillby is not even on the list even though _that_ joke writes _itself_. Sans has a vague premonition that she’s going to top the list with _him_ , and he can’t tell if that’s a non-memory or just an inference from the way she’s petting the top of his skull like he’s one of the dogs.

This is somehow the most normal and most surreal experience of his life. He isn’t sure if he likes it, but also he never wants it to stop, please. Please just let this all keep happening. Please just let life keep on _happening_.

“Heeeeey, Sansy,” whispers Coni, leaning way over the table to press her face against the side of his skull, “Are yoooou okhay? You seeeem a lil quiet.”

He flicks her some finger-guns without looking up. “you know me, coni, i’m _ale_ -ways okay.”

She baps the top of his skull with one hand in what he thinks was probably supposed to be a scolding fashion, but Coni doesn’t exactly have the strength or coordination for it to be anything other than vague and pawing. “Nooooo, no puns, Sansy! Tha’s fer when you’re a _happy_ skelelelington! An’nyway this’s a _fruity thing_ cuz I’mma _lady_.”

He’s not _unhappy_. He doesn’t know that there is actually a word for whatever he is right now. Before he can decide if he’s going to try to find one, though, Coni slides back to her own side of the table, crooning, “Grillby!” as the fire elemental glides to the table.

Sans tilts his skull enough to cast one eye light skeptically up at the bartender, and then glances pointedly at the untended bar. Grillby stares down at him-- he brought the glass _with him_ , the complete nerd-- and shrugs fluidly, like him leaving the bar isn’t a legitimately weird thing that Sans is totally correct to question. Which it is.

Somewhere in the background, Sans is vaguely aware of Cheerp shouting some invented nonsense that he will insist is his “translation” of fire-speaking. Sans has been ignoring that for most of his life, so it’s nothing new, although it remains vaguely annoying at the back of his awareness, like not quite being able to remember the word he wants. It’s an asshole thing to do, is the thing-- talking over him. It’s not like Grillby’s _hard to understand_ , if anyone would bother to actually listen to him. The kid in his house is harder to understand than Grillby is. Wait, no, that’s right, he came here for a reason.

“hey grillbz. i actually gotta talk to you,” he confesses, propping his skull up with an elbow despite the fact that right now that seems like _a lot_ of effort. Coni pats his hand fondly, which he decides not to deal with right now.

Grillby respond with a drawn-out crackling hiss and the general impression that if Sans wanted to talk to him, he shouldn’t have been loitering near the door like he was going to bolt at any second.

“heh, it’s been a long… let’s go with ‘day’.” Because the alternative requires explaining too much and he’s already done it twice today. He’s done, frankly.

A sputtering, popping flicker that instructs him to go wait in the back.

“you got it, pal,” he salutes, mostly to make Grillby’s flames flicker in his best approximation of an irritated sigh.

“Feel better!” Coni calls after him as he slides out of the booth and meanders back behind the bar, leaning halfway out of her booth and somehow still managing to sway back upright. He can’t argue with her reflexes, even if her coping leaves something to be desired.

Technically, Sans shouldn’t be able to get through the fire exit to the back-- on account of not being made of fire-- but when has that ever stopped him from going where he wants? He shoulders the door like he’s actually going to use it anyway, because traditions, and pulls himself through the shortcut to the other side and hops up onto the counter to wait, pressing his slippers against the metal cabinets. It’s quieter back here. He doesn’t hate it, but he still finds himself tapping his phalanges on the metal out of habit.

(So here’s a thing: general relativity. Everything that exists bends spacetime around it. Matter moves, spacetime curves, and together they make reality. People think of gravity as holding things _down_ , but it’s really that things follow gravity _in_ , towards the center of the next-most massive object. Following the curve. So his slippers don’t really want to _fall down_ , towards the floor-- they want to _get closer_ to the center of the planet. Moving in, not down. So when he applies pressure to stop them from following that natural inclination, he isn’t holding them _up_ , he’s holding them _away_. Up and down are spatial orientations that only make sense if you have a fixed view. _In and out_ , near and far-- those are directions that mean something.

Nothing falls down. Things just get closer to each other.)

A fire-snapping sound: pay attention.

Sans blinks sideways at Grillby, as he slides the door closed and stands there with his arms crossed, and winks. “sorry, grillbz. been _burning_ the _kindle_ at both ends. _lit_ -tle distracted.”

Grillby doesn’t have eyes to roll, or really any distinguishable features in the classical sense, but he does a great impression of the vibe anyway. Sans likes to think this is his contribution to Grillby’s overall demeanour. He’s very proud.

“so uh, couple of things. first, i guess, i’m not here to pay my tab?”

Grillby stares at him flatly for a minute and then circles one hand in the universal gesture for “get on with it”, so apparently that’s not a surprise. Fair enough.

There’s really not a tactful way to phrase this, so he’s just gonna drop the grenade and pick up the pieces after the fact. “great. uh. you knew humans, yeah? i have a human question.”

Fire elementals can’t freeze, in either sense of the word. Their bodies are in constant motion, even at rest. What they do instead, when startled or upset, is _gutter_. Sans has seen it a couple of times, and it was hands-down the worst thing he’d ever seen before he started collecting Bad Experiences at this new and unprecedented rate. It’s still not great-- that essential fire sputtering to a dull, ashy red, the way his whole body kind of _chokes_ , before magic spills fire back into existence-- and Sans has to grip the edge of the counter, wincing, to stop himself from getting in Grillby’s face and trying to fix it. There’s no fixing. Nothing’s _broken_.

As soon as he’s substantial enough to do it, Grillby uncrosses his arms and-- to Sans’ surprise-- hops up on the opposite counter to stare directly into Sans’ skull for a very long and uncomfortable moment. Sans tries to look like somebody who is _not_ a traitor to his entire people, which is harder than it sounds considering he might actually be a traitor to his entire people, actually, if he thinks about it, which he would rather not.

A low, hissing whistle: just ask.

Sans taps all his phalanges under the edge of the counter a couple of times, knees bouncing restlessly. He is decreasingly certain that this is a good idea, but he’s kind of committed himself to it now. There are people he can talk out of paying attention to anything he does, but Grillby isn’t one of them and never has been. “k. they need to, like, eat things. on a regular basis? yeah?”

Technically, Grillby can’t give him a look, because of the aforementioned lack of facial features. What he _can_ do is make a disconcerting whispering rattle punctuated by a sharp snap, which amounts to the same thing.

“uh. don’t ask?” he tries, because he cannot express how much he doesn’t want to have to explain himself here. There are _layers_ to how much he doesn’t want to have to explain himself, and Grillby definitely doesn’t have time for Sans to unpack all of them even if he had the energy to try.

After a hesitation, he gets a sizzling murmur and the impression that humans not only need to eat thing on a regular basis, they need to eat _a variety_ of things, _multiple times a day_. Which this one, he’s pretty sure, definitely hasn’t been doing. So that’s great.

“k. thanks. uh,” he waffles a little, but whatever, in for a penny, “any way i can get a burger to go?”

There he goes again with that lack-of-an-eyeroll. Sans shrugs as Grillby slides off the counter, ducks down next to one of the ovens, and pulls a pan out of the warming drawer. He dumps a burger on a piece of waxed paper and neatly folds it all up into a tidy package that he hands to Sans with the air of a man extremely put-upon. Which is fair. He puts up with Sans _regularly_ , and so far he hasn’t been kicked out of the bar yet. Grillby’s a saint, really.

“you’re a real _fire_ -end,” he says, winking, hopping off the counter and shoving the burger in his hoodie-- ignoring Grillby’s exasperated snap-hissing with long practice-- and reaching for the familiar confines of his own room.

Grillby’s hands don’t _burn_ , exactly-- they can, but Sans has never seen him actually ignite himself with the intention of hurting anyone-- but they still spread warmth like any normal magical fire would. Sans stalls, halfway into a shortcut, as the fire elemental’s hand presses down on his shoulder and warm, comfortable magic seeps into his bones.

“........................... be careful,” says Grillby, as he lets go.

Sans steps through the shortcut, into the dark, before it can become a thing. Clicks his phalanges to flick the switch and let light fill into the room. Flicks his eye lights around the room. Nothing seems out of place-- treadmill he never got around to cannibalizing for parts, assorted clothes everywhere, self-sustaining trash tornado.

Well, if the kid’s been in here they were subtle about it, which is probably all he can hope for at this point.

He kicks the drawers open and rifles through them-- he’s sure he has some of his old textbooks in here somewhere. It’s admittedly been a while since he bothered to read them. A normal kind of while, not a time-anomaly kind of while. It had been a while _before_ the loops started.

He’s not actually sure why he stopped. Alphys has been harassing him to work at the lab for… years, probably. It was why she was his first stop during the initial sequence, once he had enough data to justify it as something that was _actually happening_ and not just an absolutely _wild_ case of déjà vu. But the lab’s close to the Core, and he’s no͠t͜ s̴͡͏u̵͏͠p͠͞p̡os҉͟e͢҉d̡̧ t̷o̶̧҉̶... _can’t remember_ ow, jeez. He doesn’t love being down there.

Oh, got ‘em. When did he even get this many trombones? _Why_ did he get this many trombones? One would be enough for the joke. Whatever, he dumps them out of the drawer in a distinctly unmusical clatter and picks the books out of the pile.

As if in answer to _his_ loud noise, there are several extremely ominous thumping sounds somewhere out in the rest of the house. Sans hesitates, eye lights flicking over the wall, but it doesn’t sound like _violence_ per se? Nobody’s shouting. No horrifying static void-summoning noises. He drills his phalanges on the spines of the books. Yeah, no, he should investigate that. He flicks another book out of the trash tornado even as he’s pulling through a shortcut into the living room.

The human’s sprawled in a pile at the bottom of the stairs.

In the seconds after his mind helpfully shuts down, he remembers that this is not at all the first time they’ve done this and he should _acquire some chill_. But also: he was gone for less than half an hour, _how often does this happen_. Did they fall _down_ the stairs, or just _at the foot_ of the stairs. Neither option is great, but one is _significantly_ worse.

They’re breathing. Nothing looks broken or bloody or like it’s about to fall off. That’s something. Time hasn’t jumped back. They’re not dead. This is all fine. _Chill_ , Sans.

“back on the floor, huh?” he says, not at all like he’s just had another metaphorical heart attack about this _murder child_. Which, if they want to kill him, there are easier ways than this.

They blink open their eyes, expressionlessly, and stare at him for a long moment. With an attitude of great deliberation, they say, “Feet are bad.”

Which is, on the one hand, hilarious. Good use of present tense verbs, though! That whole language project is really coming along. On the other hand-- he glances at the stairs, trying not to grimace too obviously-- that sounds suspiciously like the angel version of “I tripped and almost broke my neck.” But at least they’re talking, and they don’t seem to be in any distress, so. It’s probably fine. It’s fine.

“welp,” he settles for, eventually, “can’t disagree with that. your whole floating thing definitely seems like an improvement.”

And probably explains something about their total inability to use their legs properly. He can’t imagine a moldsmal or a tsunderplane doing a great job with bipedal motion either.

They squint up at him, faintly judgemental. They do that a lot, actually. “hey. uh. you have a vision problem?”

“No eyes,” they say, which, _that’s_ some nonsense. Their profusion of eyes is an embarrassment to spiders.

“beg to differ. a lot.”

They pause, inhale deeply, and then pantomime the most dramatic, explosive sigh their little lungs can possibly accomplish. It is the _most_ Papyrus thing he has ever seen. He almost chokes trying not to laugh in their face.

“I am feeling vexed,” they tell him blandly.

“uh huh,” he says, doing his _absolute best_ to get his stupid grin under control, because he kind of doubts they realize they’re hilarious and he doesn’t think they’d really appreciate finding out, “that why you’re on the floor?”

They turn this over in their head way too long for it to be true, but they do actually nod at the end of whatever calculation that was. _Definitely_ fell down the stairs. Actually, there was that whole… _explosion_ incident that he never thoroughly examined, too. For an angel, they’re pretty danger-prone. Better keep an eye on that.

“welp,” he shrugs, and turns on his heel to fall on his back beside them. This is fine. If they want to chill on the floor, he’s not gonna argue. The pace of this loop has been, uh, _a lot_.

He carefully doesn’t look over as they turn their head to glare at the side of his skull. “ _You_ are vexing,” they say, as if this is news.

“so i’ve been told.”

They squint at him for a couple of seconds before turning their face back to the ceiling without comment.

He’s, honestly, almost drifting into a nap when they suddenly say, “Who was eye?” They spit it out fast, like they’re worried if they linger over it any longer they’ll lose track of the words they want.

He flinches and almost reaches for the eye in question, compulsively, before he stops himself. It’s not even activate, and he would kind of prefer it stayed that way while the angel’s around, to be honest, he could do without the headache. His eye lights tick across the ceiling, considering (counting, but somewhere in the background, where it won’t slow him down) what he even _can_ say about that.

He’s not an idiot.

There’s nothing like Judgement anywhere in the Underground, except the thing crouching in this tiny human on the floor next to him, a mess of geometric shapes and centerless blue fire and terrifyingly keen eyes. He’s never met another monster who can do what he can. Not _really_. Because it’s not CHECKing, no matter how he frames it when he talks to other people. He can CHECK, too. He knows the difference. CHECKs don’t unravel somebody’s life story and pick out all the worst parts, line them up in neat organized lines and spool through them, flickering on the inside of his skull. CHECKs don’t summon ghost echoes of every hurt someone’s ever inflicted. CHECKs don’t show Levels of Violence, or Execution Points, or calculate the precise amount of reflected damage someone deserves to even the scales.

Willful ignorance only takes you so far.

“don’t have a good answer for ya,” he says finally, because he doesn’t, he’s never known what this is, just that it’s _his_ and he’s _stuck with it_ , “something like you, i guess. yeah?”

“Choirmate,” they say, and it still doesn’t really make _sense_ , per se, but it means _something_ , and he has the unsettling feeling it means something like _family_ , “Ophan.”

“... yeah,” he says, and tries not to feel like maybe he should find out if he can, in fact, just rip his own eye out, “guess so.”

He doesn’t _feel_ like he’s got a whole other person stuffed into his bones, but honestly Sans isn’t particularly confident that he’d be able to tell the difference, seeing as this has been _his whole life_ and he’s already got a lot of _suspicious holes_ in his memory.

“Where?” they ask, and yeah, that’s. That’s exactly the question, isn’t it.

“... i know how this is gonna sound,” like he’s being an evasive jerk, specifically, but it’s kind of his own fault he has that reputation; and honestly he’s not sure how well this part of the conversation will go, if at all, given that he’s never been able to get anyone else to hold onto the idea that they’re _missing information_ , “but i don’t remember.”

“Memory extended.”

“yeah,” he says wearily, because he probably deserves the skepticism but _stars_ it’s exhausting, “unfortunately. but not everything.”

Silently, without any indication that they particularly want it to be noticed, they press the heels of their hands hard against their closed eyes, fingers curled in the air just above their hairline and gently flinching, as their breath catches in their throat and sticks there.

“... sorry,” he says, thinking about a tiny Papyrus with his hands all balled up in fists, trying to force himself not cry, because he was lonely.

A choked little sob stumbles out of their mouth, and Sans moves before he really thinks about it, saying some stupid useless comfort sounds and trying to cup their skull, careful, in his hand. He’s not even sure why. It made Papyrus feel better, sometimes. They’re a kid. For all he knows, the _angel_ is a kid. It sure acts like one a disconcerting amount of the time. It’s not, really, that different from comforting Papyrus, back when Pap still let himself be comforted, before he decided he had to be the best at everything, including emotional stability.

They pull their hands away from their face, probably startled that anyone would _touch them_ , and blink tears down their face, staring at him. After a moment, he guesses they decide this is fine, because they just curl up against his ribs, making themself as small as possible and hiding their face behind their hands again. Which he didn’t expect, but… there doesn’t seem to be a knife or an extra-dimensional scream coming, so. He curls his phalanges around the curve of their skull, threading his distal phalanges through their hair, careful not to get it caught in the space between his bones.

“ok,” he says, because it’s. They’re a kid. And this is all a lot. Sometimes all that _a lot_ doesn’t fit so great in a tiny kid body and you’ve just gotta cry it out. That’s fine. “ok.”

He smoothes their hair and counts stripes of wood grain and just beneath the front of his consciousness, low enough that it isn’t really worth attention or alarm, bells chime, slow and soft, in time with the human’s heartbeat. He can feel it against his ribs.

They sit up suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, before he even realizes their soft little whimpery noises have subsided. They pull their sweater sleeves up over their hands and scrub their face vigorously, blinking slowly and deliberately, like a cat. With absolutely no fanfare, they wrap their fingers around one of the books he has balanced on top of his ribs and pull optimistically, despite the fact that he really doubts they’ve got the mass they need to fight both the weight of the book and _Sans holding on to them_. He resists the impulse to raise his brow bone at them and just stands up without comment, pulling them upright a moment later. He gives them a once-over, but they don’t seem trembling or stressed out anymore. Which. He’s not sure it’s great that they can jump straight to the next state without really processing the whole crying thing, but he’s not an angel expert, so.

“you ok?”

They just try to take a book again, so probably. He pulls out of their range, commenting, “pushy,” as he heads to the couch.

Which. Isn’t right? There’s nothing _wrong_ with it. Per se. He scans over it dubiously-- sometimes Pap tries to devise “ANTI-LAZINESS” puzzles, and the couch is a prime target-- but nothing seems obviously out-of-place. Maybe the cushions are a little flat.

… he should probably work on the paranoia thing, huh.

“c’mon,” he says, slumping on the cushion that seems _least_ wrong, “research time.”

They climb up _very carefully_ , one limb at a time, like they’re scaling a mountain and crawl to the middle of the cushion with exaggerated care before they plop down and look at him expectantly.

“also,” he says around a smirk, fishing in his hoodie for the (definitely cold, sorry Grillbz) burger before they do _something else adorable_ and distract him, “lunch.”

They unwrap the hamburger like they’ve never seen the like before-- hell, maybe they haven’t, they’re from what, the uh, _vault of heaven_ , maybe it’s all manna or whatever up there-- and then balance it precariously on the arm of the couch and reach for a book. So clearly it’s gonna be like that. That’s fine. Sans has _plenty_ of experience coercing picky babybones into eating things they don’t want, and this one has made it _super easy_ by making what they actually want to do _very obvious_. He flicks the book they’re reaching for about two feet out of reach without looking and waits for the familiar tingle of somebody glaring at him.

“first you eat, then you research,” he says, ignoring their obvious irritation, and then decides to throw some math flavour on it for maximum annoyance, “order of operations. very important.”

“ _You,_ ” they say, as if he’s an _amateur_.

“already ate,” he lies, “your turn.”

Actually he probably should eat something-- he’s been burning through a lot of magic and he’s probably going to _continue_ burning through magic, and he can’t actually specifically remember the last time he ate something, which means it was probably not this loop at all-- but it’s important not to let the truth get in the way of convincing small children to do what you say.

They sigh at him, in the exact same way they did before-- they _definitely_ got that from Papyrus, and he should maybe be a little worried about how much attention they’ve clearly been paying to _everything his brother does_ , but it’s, to be honest, pretty clearly hero-worship, he’s seen enough of it from MK towards Undyne to recognize the signs-- and _very resentfully_ pick up the burger. Which means he wins. He glances at the book he’s been using as a prop during this little stand-off and skips to the index to actually do something useful.

When he glances at them to see how they’re getting on, though, they’re frozen with the burger still in front of their face, one bite taken out of it, wide-eyed.

“... you doing okay there?” he checks. Maybe he should have, uh, taken a look at what was _on_ the burger. Grillby isn’t usually _adventurous_ , and his standard burger is pretty great, but.

They blink, still wide-eyed, and nod, but they don’t seem super confident about that. But they take another bite, and keep eating, so he’s not gonna discourage them from doing _the thing he wanted them to do_. Maybe feed them something else next time, though. This isn’t _actually_ like when he was a kid and options were limited and he had to get Pap to eat _whatever Sans could scrounge up_. He can afford to figure out what this particular kid actually _likes_ to eat.

He pulls the book out of the air and dumps it back on the pile. Rewards for actually doing the thing are an important part of the process. But to his surprise, they don’t immediately dive for the book now that they have permission to read it-- they just hold their hands out in front of them, shaking them restlessly and making an uneasy buzzing sound in their throat. It takes him a minute to recognize what the problem is, tracing the vague, uncertain displeasure on their face.

“no words for that problem, huh,” he muses. They flick their hands in vague little shooing gestures, like they might be able to just dismiss the sensory input they don’t like. Clearly they can’t, though, or this wouldn’t be causing a problem.

He sighs, shrugging himself off the couch and picking them up under the arms before he can think better of it, because otherwise they’re gonna be stuck up there wiggling their way off the couch without using their hands for a pretty good grip of time. 

“c’mon then,” he says over his shoulder, shuffling into the kitchen, “let’s get you clean hands.”

The sink, he realizes, is going to be a problem. Papyrus is great, but sometimes his decisions are… yeah.

He sighs into his hoodie and leans down to make actual eye contact with the kid for once. They aren’t great at it, but he doesn’t think it’s actually an aversion, because they don’t _avoid_ eye contact if someone else initiates it. They just don’t seem to realize they should be doing it. They blink at him solemnly, still holding their hands a little in front of them, flexing their fingers and twisting their wrists. He is distinctly reminded of the ways cats will freak out if they step in water, treating that paw like it’s not even part of them anymore until it’s clean.

“k,” he says, watching their face very carefully, because they aren’t _great_ with expressing emotions but it’s pretty obvious they’ve _got ‘em_ and he doesn’t want to miss it if this freaks them out, “we’re gonna do something a little scary, maybe. pap decided he needed a tall sink-- _for some reason_ \-- so ‘m gonna do a little magic to getcha up there. you can wash your hands at the tap. k?”

They look up at the sink for a split second before they nod, but he doesn’t see anything alarming about their expression. Just a kind of mild interest. He’ll keep an eye socket on them anyway. He glances back up to gauge the distance and snaps his phalanges to turn their soul blue.

And nothing happens.

He can feel his magic sliding off of something, frictionless. He snaps again, watching them, and the same thing happens. Or fails to, more specifically. They blink at him guilelessly.

“huh,” he says, snapping a couple of times experimentally-- he actually has the vague impression of his magic sliding over _mass_ , or maybe _space_ as he does it, like his targetting’s off, which is a problem he’s never had before, “ok. i guess that’s not really a surprise.”

Nothing he did in the encounter affected the soul either, now that he thinks about it. It all hit the… angel, apparently. Well. That’s interesting-- raises a whole series of questions that he wants to test, like whether the angel is just too _massive_ to get a grip on, or not massive _enough_ , or just incompatible with standard magic, since technically Karma is a whole separate field-- but not really convenient right now, when the angel in question is waggling their sticky hands directly in front of his eye sockets, humming with frustration. That’s okay. He can improvise.

“welp. let’s try this, then,” he says, and adjusts his attention to their actual body. It’s not as easy as targeting a soul generally is-- bodies have a lot of _stuff_ to keep track of, and humans in particular have a lot of _hidden_ stuff, all kinds of organs and things that aren’t particularly adaptable to changes in their environment from Sans’ admittedly limited and violent experience-- but it’s doable. The magic clicks into place without any further problems.

Well, no problems with the _magic_. The kid goes rigid for a split second and then starts flailing frantically, which is the most distressed he’s maybe ever seen them. He snags them by an ankle and tugs them closer slowly, waving them gently back and forth with his hand illustratively. Their eyes track his hand with interest as panic slowly bleeds out of their expression.

“‘m not gonna drop ya,” he promises, and floats them _very gently_ up, watching for any signs of continued anxiety. Not least because they’ve already had like four crying jags today and he doesn’t really want to be responsible for _another one_ , and also because he doesn’t really want to be disintegrated out of spite if they get really freaked out. Not to mention that it would just… be a dick move, to spook the kid after promising to be careful. Apparently they believe him, though, because with that assurance they just hang in the grip of the magic without complaint, blinking down at him with mild interest until they’re even with the edge of the sink. An expression of _intense focus_ appears on their face, eyebrows scrunching down over their squinted eyes, as they get down to the arduous business of washing their hands.

Sans makes himself comfortable against the counter and watches them fiddle with tolerant amusement, careful to keep them in a steady position that should feel relatively secure. As secure as you can be while trusting someone to literally fight gravity for you. Which isn’t _super_ secure, but he’ll do his best.

When he’s pretty sure they’ve done all the _cleaning_ they can and are probably just playing in the sink-- a Papyrus classic-- he brings them back to ground level and snaps them free of the magic. They wobble very slightly as they become responsible for carrying their own weight again, but not alarmingly or any more than he’d expect from anyone getting used to gravity after a break. They’re much more interested in the state of their hands, still, shaking them slightly. He raises a brow bone when they make another restless grumbling sound in their throat.

He coughs to get their attention-- they laser in on him this time, which is a little unsettling, but he’s kind of getting used to the way they vacillate between vague interest and intense focus on things-- and mimes wiping his phalanges dry on his hoodie. They study him for a moment, then study their own hands, then _very cautiously_ mimic him.

Their eyes light up, and they make a little hum of satisfaction, diligently wiping their hands dry and then showing him, like it was _his idea_. “Mm! Yes!”

“cool,” he says, not even trying to disguise a laugh this time, but they just hum, radiating satisfaction with their accomplishment, “research now?”

They don’t actually _sprint_ into the living room, but he’s pretty sure that’s because they’re not coordinated enough. Still climb up onto the couch like they’re carefully navigating treacherous terrain, though.

Sans goes back to his index while they grab the book they wanted to begin with, and starts checking for references to chronons, vaguely aware of the kid flipping through pages quickly. Before he really gets anywhere with that, though, the kid leans over the edges of the couch to carefully put their book on the floor and reaches for the next one. They freeze when they catch him looking at them, a vaguely guilty expression crawling across their face for a second before vanishing.

“what exactly are you doing,” he asks, slowly, as it dawns on him that _maybe_ he shouldn’t have assumed the _small child_ could actually follow his _quantum physics_ textbooks, angel or no angel.

“Research,” they say, holding up another book in front of their face like a shield.

“uh huh,” he says, glancing at the discarded book, “you actually read any of that?”

They tilt their head, becoming visible again around the edge of the book. “Mmm. Image? Record. Review.”

He pauses, considering. That’s… well. If they mean what he _thinks_ they mean, he guesses they _would_ be able to get through 184 pages of dense academic text in about five minutes. “huh.”

“we’d call that a photographic memory, pretty sure,” he says, _something_ picking at the back of his skull, not _quite_ something he can’t remember specifically but definitely on the periphery of it, “it’s uh, not supposed to be literally possible for people. eidetic, yeah, maybe. photographic? nah.”

“pap has one, though.” Not that Sans really encourages him to spread that around, and he’s pretty sure nobody _believes_ him-- probably they don’t think Pap even know what a photographic memory _is_ \-- but Sans tested him on it at one point. Pap had been delighted to show off. “and… hhh. well, guess this’ll be a short study session, anyway.”

Something’s off, but he can’t pinpoint it. That’s not _precisely_ an unfamiliar experience at this point, but usually it’s accompanied by a very distinctive series of side effects, and this… isn’t that. No sharp stinging pain to discourage him from pushing too hard in this direction, just… an absence, like a missing tooth. Something he _should_ know, but maybe not something he’s _forgotten_ , exactly. An inference he should be able to make, but can’t, because of what he _has_ forgotten, maybe. Empty variables.

The kid’s hand pressing flat against the side of his skull brings him sharply back to attention. He glances at them uncertainly. “uh.”

They pull their hand back to cover their eyes, and for a second he thinks something went wrong while he was zoning out and they’re about to start crying again. “Eyes,” they say instead, crisply, “See time. This? Distress? Go away.”

They pull their hands away and make a face-- eyebrows pulled down, mouth all scrunched up-- when they see him sitting there looking at them. They lean over to push on his leg with both hands. “Go! Go!”

“uh,” he chuckles, raising a brow bone at the top of their head as they push him more stridently, not that it gets them anywhere, “ok, thanks for the heads-up, but uh. nah. not going anywhere.”

They stare at him for a second before pulling their face into a very artificial, obviously carefully-orchestrated frown. “Distress!” they shout, waving their hands in his face-- at his left eye socket, he realizes after a second, where Judgement materializes, “You! Distress! Go away!”

He intercepts a flailing hand before it can hit him. He doesn’t think it would have been very intentional-- they startle when he does it and blink at their own hand in mild bemusement, the manufactured frown falling off of their face immediately-- but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have shaved a few percentage points off his HP and he doesn’t have time for that mess. He gets it-- it’s kind of sweet, actually, that they’re trying to protect him from, what, his own eye? He guesses the side effects of looking directly at the angel haven’t exactly been subtle-- but see, here’s the thing: _he’s the adult_.

“nope. no thanks. last time i left you alone, you fell down a flight of stairs,” he says, flatly, “don’t think i didn’t notice.”

The last, what, hour? Has made it abundantly clear that the angel either literally _is_ a child or might as well be, and that means that Sans, however much he _doesn’t want to be_ , is responsible for keeping everything together. He doesn’t have to _like it_. He just has to _do it_.

He’s pretty sure he’s been the kid trying to be a grown-up. From what he does remember, it’s not a great time. He _is_ the grown-up now. It’s his job as much as anybody’s.

They blink at him, pulling slightly on their hand. He lets go and they pull it back carefully, curl their fingers up conscientiously in the hem of their sweater. “Mistake,” they explain cautiously, “Feet are bad.”

“yep,” he shrugs, because it’s not like he doesn’t believe them. He’s just not going to let them out of his sight ever again. Mistakes can be just as fatal as intentions. “still not going anywhere. do your angel thing.”

They hesitate, lifting one hand over the left side of their face demonstratively. “Distress?”

He sighs, flipping a book open at random. Really, he was _planning_ to read these, not use them as props in arguments with a ten year old angel, but here he is. “i’ll get over it,” he says, because if he’s learned how to do anything over hundreds and hundreds of loops it’s _get over it_ when he has to do something he doesn’t enjoy, “go on, do whatever.”

He’s not looking forward to this, if he’s honest with himself. So far, every exposure has sucked to some degree, and he doubts it’ll be _better_ for having the kid right next to him on the couch. But it is what it is. Judgement reacts to the angel’s eyes with _really infuriating_ consistency.

Still. He can multitask. They’re doing this for their own reasons-- _research_ , he thinks, a little sarcastically-- and if he’s going to be here for it, which he is, he might as well be productive. Assuming he’s, you know, capable of coherent thought this close to the experience. And if he’s not, hey, that’ll be useful data after the fact.

Now that he’s actually paying attention, he can feel something _gathering_ before Judgement even starts burning in his eye socket, flinging itself restlessly inside his skull like it’s _possessed_ , trying to make eye contact with the angel. It’s just as incomprehensible as last time-- angles that _aren’t angles_ , wheels that interlock like puzzle pieces spinning through each other at disparate speeds, and way more eyes than he’s comfortable with floating disconnected in nothing, spinning under their own power-- but the overall experience has been worse. It’s less of a shock, for one thing, since he a) has seen this-- or, really, variations on this, since nothing about the angel’s components seems to really be _secure_ from one moment to the next-- before and b) knew it was coming this time. The noise is certainly less obnoxious than the first time, despite the fact that he’s technically _physically_ closer to it, which reinforces the idea that it has to do with Sahaquiel’s actual _attention_ \-- maybe that’s actually its native language, it said something about songs earlier that he kind of glossed but he guesses you _could_ call this music, if you were a sadist, he thinks he can hear some kind of bells beneath all the _mess_ ; might explain why using discrete words is such a trial for it-- rather than with direct proximity, because the angel is diligently ignoring him, not a single eye making contact with his.

They’re watching the soul, actually-- Frisk, he thinks, gotta remember that this is a _whole other child_ he has to worry about, jeez-- and he realizes why with a sinking feeling as they suddenly _glow_. Seen that before, seen that _a lot_ of times before, he probably should have clarified what they meant by _see time_ , how much are they going to lose, please don’t be a full loop, _stars please_ he is doing his best but he cannot keep doing this--

\--but nothing happens.

Well. _Something_ happens. He can feel a kind of hesitation, like reality taking a breath, and then something _settles_ , like a _very big_ version of the way magic clicks into place when it hits the intended target. But then things _keep going_.

Cool. Great. He’s not going to have a breakdown. He’s hit his quota for the next hundred loops, probably. This is all fine. He’s fine.

He kind of tunes out the rest of whatever they do, to be totally honest, scraping his palms over his eye socket to make sure he isn’t _crying_ like an _idiot_ , literally _nothing happened_. Judgement keeps trying to connect, but Sahaquiel is ignoring it, so it’s fine, and he kind of. Yeah. He didn’t see anything he could explain. Over his paygrade. Out of his wheelhouse. Not his business.

Their eyes all slam closed suddenly and his eye flickers out immediately. He ticks his eye lights back on in Judgement’s absence and glances at the kid. They’re watching him with undisguised concern. So that’s great.

“Distress?” they ask, _slight_ undertones of _I told you so_. Which. Fair. He shrugs, shoving his hands in his hoodie and tacking the edges of his smile back into place carefully. Be the _fucking adult_ , Sans.

“anything interesting?”

They only keep watching him for a second before the lure of data gets their attention. Sans gives himself a point. He is _excellent_ at wrangling scientists and, apparently, angels.

“Time pull. Mm. World: this,” they say, pulling out their sweater demonstratively. “Whole. Yet! Thus also: threads. Pull, unravel, structural collapse. Fragile. Yet! Change. Break? New thread. Repair possible.”

He swivels to give them his full attention, mostly because they keep glancing up to check that he’s paying attention and he kind of wants to reassure them that he’s listening. Pap always got nervous when he couldn’t tell if his audience was actually interested.

He can get behind this as a framework. It’s not totally out-of-alignment with some of M-theory, although he gets the impression they’re not really talking about a _theoretical_ framework. On the one hand, it would be really useful to actually see whatever _Sahaquiel_ sees; on the other hand, exposure so far suggests that if he ever got _that_ stuck into it, his skull would probably just explode. So maybe not.

“Frisk reports: SAVE, determination. Thus: world gather.” They use their other hand to pinch the front of their sweater and pull it towards one point. Okay, so that’s-- that’s what they _just did_ , that feeling of the world _clicking into place_ , they were making an anchor. Or a SAVE, apparently.

He didn’t realize they had an anchor _in his house_ , but he supposes they haven’t been in here in _a long time_ , since Pap hasn’t been… _around_ to invite them in.

It’s not really surprising that it’s determination specifically that makes this possible. It’s been on his and Alph’s list of theories for a while, although so have _a lot_ of things. Not sure what that says about the weed, though-- monsters didn’t, uh, handle DT very well in the one catastrophic test Alphys did on the subject. Sans wasn’t convinced that the flower _was_ a monster-- he didn’t really know what _else_ it could be, but if this loop had taught him nothing else it had taught him that he had _no idea_ what the limits on reality actually were-- but if it was, cutting it from whatever its source of determination was (assuming it wasn’t, you know, critical to life or whatever) would probably be better for it in the long run anyway. Not that Sans was particularly a _fan_ , or really concerned for its wellbeing. Just. In general.

“Soul retain thread orientation. Probable LOAD, thus,” they let go of their sweater and it flattens back out. Only _probable_ though, interesting. “Yet! Pull, twist, damage. Thread damage. Many times, many damage. Follow damage, find origin. Repair damage, possible null command of time. Threads thus: whole.”

Alright, so, a lot of anomalies equals a fucked up timespace continuum. This isn’t really news-- he’s had calculations to that effect for a while-- but the idea that there’s a _specific piece_ of the timespace continuum that’s _extra_ broken, which might be the root of the problem, is a new thought. A potentially encouraging thought. Hell, if they can decouple _everyone_ from controlling time, which is an objective Sans can _wholeheartedly support_ , they won’t even need to deal with the weed directly before they… figure out how to get the kid outside.

Right.

Yeah.

Still gotta deal with that.

He’s not looking forward to it.

“Damage there,” they say, glancing at the front door with a frown, “Yet far. Eyes fail. Too small. Skin, vessel, small.”

He blinks, bemused. The angel doesn’t seem particularly small to him-- not the whole wheels-and-wings-and-eyes collection part, anyway; he’s not sure that really has _mass_ in the traditional sense, he gets the sense he’s just kind of seeing _one side of it_ \-- but they would know better than him. “huh. i kind of just figured you were always this size.”

The look they give him is _scathing_. “Null,” they snap. “Not small. Much. Burn out planet. Break. Shatter. Planet important. Unacceptable. Thus: small.”

“... oh,” says Sans, kind of wishing he hadn’t asked, “... uh. thanks, i think.”

“Null useful,” they snarl, flailing in the direction that they apparently couldn’t _look hard enough_ , “Null thanks. Bad! Small is bad! Inefficient! More bad!”

“hey, hey,” he says, getting halfway to pulling them into a hug before he changes his mind and settles for making vague _settle down_ motions with his hands, “you’re not-- look. i’m not exactly a neutral observer here? i live here, i want it to not be, uh, burned out. more or less. but just from observation, you’re not useless? you’re, uh, kind of terrifying. but not useless.”

They give him another Papyrus Original Dramatic Sigh. “Mortal all small. All terror. Even small! Terror.”

Sans sighs like a normal person. Abstractly, he wonders if they’ll pick up other people’s mannerisms with exposure or if they’ll be Tiny Papyrus forever now. He’s not actually sure which he would prefer, although just from a socialization standpoint the former is probably better for them. “kind of missing my point. you’re doing fine. we’ll figure it out. k? i’ve uh, i’ve got a lot of practice with… what you might call lost causes. might actually have a chance with this one. so. that’s. yep.”

He trails off awkwardly. Great job adulting, Sans. He just told the small child that they’re his best hope for solving the single greatest crisis of his life. The fact that it’s _true_ doesn’t mean he should _say it_. He grimaces vaguely at the door, wondering if there’s any way to spin that to take it back without it being _brutally obvious_ , but nothing immediately occurs to him. Wonderful.

“Mmm,” they hum, picking at their sweater hem restlessly, “Thread damage. Eye where. Forgotten? Else? Forgotten else?”

He blinks, even as something jabs ominously at the back of his skull. Oh. _Oh_. “uh. ok. let’s. yep, let’s see if this-- ok.” Wow, framing this in actual words is a lot harder than he thought it would be. He has new sympathy for the angel’s whole word drama. “huh. hang on, this is-- uh, this is tricky.”

They scoot forward onto their knees and lean _way_ into his personal space, using his shoulders as a balancing rod to stare intently into his left eye socket. His eye lights flick over their face, but there’s nothing there but that _intense focus_ again, so this is… probably data-related and not, in fact, Sahaquiel deciding to sneak a knife into his ribs after all. Which doesn’t actually make it less creepy, so uh, add _discuss boundaries with the angel_ to his list of things to do at some point.

“Thus,” they say, tracking something invisible around the room with one hand, making a pair of quick circles over his ribcage, right where his soul sits, “Here. Damage. Forgotten else?”

Oh, _okay then_. Yeah, if the damage to _spacetime_ is connected to him directly, it _probably is_ related to whatever he can’t remember. Which would be great, if he could _pull any of that information_. He scrapes his phalanges over his skull, distantly trying to distract himself from the escalating stab of _don’t think about that_ as he tries to force words into his mouth.

“how-- ok. there’s a-- space. thing’s i can’t-- yeah. where i learned things, how i got… here. hard to talk about. hard to _think_ about.” Which is why he usually doesn’t, directly, he thinks _around it_ and even then he can’t quite get a grip on what he wants, has to fight through the distraction of _pain_ , but this is definitely the worst it’s been, so uh, progress? “like none of it ever happ-- like he-- he wasn’t-- like--”

Something touches the top of his skull in several gentle motions. He blinks. The kid peers down into his eye sockets and pets the top of his skull one more time, very carefully. “uh?”

“Enough,” they say calmly, leaning back a little, “Forgotten else. Find. Central forgotten? Place?”

He glances at his own hand, which the kid apparently pulled away from his skull at some point. Huh. Yeah, that’s right, they didn’t approve earlier either. They peel their fingers away from his wrist, watching him very closely, and make a very satisfied face when he puts his hands in his hoodie. … yeah, okay, they can be sweet. Kind of overprotective, but. Anyway.

“uh. something about the core,” that’s the only _place_ that he knows he’s forgetting something about, anyway, “i don’t know. maybe.”

“Core?” they ask, immediately turning to scramble off the couch. They don’t do a great job-- explains why they were so careful getting up, probably-- and he has to grab their shoulder to keep them steady.

“big machine,” he explains, reluctantly getting up, putting on a slipper he lost at some point, “powers the underground. something’s wrong with it… i dunno. i can’t remember.”

“There,” they say imperiously, pulling on the edge of his hoodie, “Translocate. Take.”

He blinks down at them, raising one brow bone. Bossy little thing. “s’that what you call it. seen you doing it yourself. you don’t want to make your own jumps?”

They give him a double-whammy of frowning _with_ a Papyrus Sigh, which combined with their Very Intense and Serious Frowny Face is pretty much the most amusing face they’ve ever made. He should get a photo. He should _frame_ it. “Small,” they complain, pointedly.

He shrugs, wrapping one hand around their shoulder. It’s not like it puts him out to take passengers. “alright then. one shortcut, coming up.”

He doesn’t love going to the Core. Whole lot of _can’t remember_ around there.

But for once, that’s kinda the point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naming the unnamed Snowdin NPCs is the bane of my existence, just so you all know. Also, Coni/Drunk Bunny/That Displaced Spinda Who Ended Up In Undertale is that strangely perceptive, supportive drunk girl who materializes in the bathroom of Every Bar when you need her most, and I will hear no slander otherwise.


	16. reveille

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Seventeen of _in action how like an angel_.

So here’s the thing: Sans doesn’t actually know how shortcuts work. Not in a way he could explain to anyone, anyway, and that’s the only way that matters-- if you can’t explain it, it’s pretty bad _science_.

(If you can’t explain it, he thinks a little sarcastically, it’s just _magic_.)

But he uses it, right? He’s _been_ using it for so long that the possibility that he shouldn’t is kind of off-the-table. Somewhere in that ambiguous haze of things he _can’t remember_ , presumably, he learned how to do it-- instinct, or practice, or theory, who knows. It works, more or less, and he doesn’t need to know _how_ it works to _do_ it. He know what it _feels like_ , the way he knows what his soul feels like. And the same way that he know when something’s gone _wrong_ with his soul, he can feel when something goes _wrong_ with a shortcut.

Nothing goes wrong with this one. Which is why it’s so confusing that he ends up in what he’s pretty sure was a storage closet at some point, instead of in the antechamber to the center of the Core Facility, which is what he _reached_ for.

Not that grabbing specific locations in the Core is ever particularly straightforward, but he’s pretty sure he got the right place this time. It’s a familiar enough spot. H҉̴ę̴̢̛͠ ͢͞͠ư͘͠s̛͘͟͟͡e̢d͏̴̧͘͝ ̡̛t̸͝o̸̵̧͘͞ ̴̨͢s̸͜͠ņ̡e̕͘a̵͠҉k͏̴͝ ̶͢͠͞i̶̕n̢ ҉͘͞w̡̧̨̛h̡͢e͝n͢͢… _nope_ , can’t remember. Yeah, this is a gonna be great.

“huh,” he says, steadying the kid automatically when they make their inevitable attempt to fall over, “coulda sworn--”

Oh, god damn it.

_Mettaton._

“hhh. he already started moving the rooms.”

“Core?” they ask.

He shrugs, making a seesawing “who knows” gesture with his free hand. “kinda. yeah? just not where i meant to land. thought i was aiming for further in. or, uh, a different room in the same place. it’s complicated.”

They twist their head around to give him a thin, searching look. Sans puts his hands in his pockets and does his level best to look trustworthy, but from their suspicious squint he doesn’t think he manages. Which, listen, he isn’t even actually doing anything shady right now. He’s not even being… _particularly_ avoidant. He could be way worse than this. So. Unwarranted.

“uh,” he sighs, “we’re gonna want to walk to rest of the way.”

He’s not looking forward to it, but the alternative is that maybe they end up phased halfway through a support column, or three feet off the edge of a cliff, or something. He’s lucky there was a room here _at all_.

Also, just being in the building is giving him a low-grade headache that he suspects is only going to get worse the more time he spends here, which doesn’t do great things for his accuracy either. So that’s great.

“Inefficient,” they complain, which isn’t really a surprise.

“yep,” he says, shrugging.

He’s mostly thinking about how to derail whatever tantrum is incoming-- considering they had what was maybe a tiny breakdown about inefficiency less than five minutes ago, he doesn’t expect this to go over _well_. That’s the only defense he has for not noticing that there is a whimsalot a) in the room with them (and it’s not like there’s a lot of _cover_ in this _empty closet_ , so great _situational awareness_ there, buddy) and b) apparently gunning for a promotion, because the first thing it actually does is start an encounter with the kid.

“ugh. mettaton, you dumb, dramatic hunk of junk.”

It’s been so long since they’ve gotten here _not_ covered in dust that Sans had kind of forgotten Mettaton even _had_ some crackpot scheme of his own. Those rare loops when he isn’t busy being a sacrificial lamb so Alph can evacuate people. Something something celebrity something something humans. Whatever.

File that under: other things Sans stopped paying attention to a long time ago.

Honestly, these days he doesn’t pay attention to a whole lot past Papyrus’ fight.

And then his own.

He sighs, leaning against the wall to watch, pressing down an instinct to CHECK both of them. 

(Whimsalots aren’t exactly robust. Not that Sans has a lot of room to talk.)

(The kid’s soul is definitely fine, and there’s no LV on it this round, so what he even wants to _CHECK_ he couldn’t say.)

He could probably shut this down.

The kid’s soul can’t be touched, but the _whimsalot’s_ sure can, and nobody enjoys getting picked up by the soul and chucked across a room. Doing it from outside the encounter wouldn’t be well received-- it doesn’t technically break any _rules_ , but it’s not polite-- but it’s not like Sans has given a shit about his reputation in years. Adding “breaks up encounters” to “tells terrible jokes” and “sleeps on the job” to most people’s view of him wouldn’t exactly be a tragedy.

Instead, Sans does what he does best. A whole lot of _absolutely nothing_.

Even from outside the encounter, even with Judgement shut down, he can see the collection of wheels and wings, translucent gold, wrapped around the human’s soul. (It doesn’t open its eyes. _Distress?_ it asked him, like it mattered. So maybe that’s why.) If the whimsalot sees anything, though, it doesn’t show any alarm about it.

Greater Dog hadn’t seemed surprised by his encounter with it either.

Nothing about this makes sense. Without Judgement, he shouldn’t see anything that any other monster wouldn’t. But even if this version of the angel is, uh, _milder_ than what it actually looks like, it’s still not _normal_. He’d think it would at least merit a double-take, a comment, _something_.

Whimsalot doesn’t seem to see anything but a human soul, though.

All the implied temptation of that glittering red shape. Freedom’s been an abstract idea to Sans for a long time, too distant to really get a grip on. Stars are a nice dream. Not something he’s ever gonna see. But. People wouldn’t Fall Down half as often if something wasn’t getting crushed under the weight of all that mountain.

If they didn’t have some kind of hope to start with, the despair wouldn’t hit them so hard.

Speaking from experience.

So yeah. He can see why everybody guns hard for that promise, even halfway through a murder parade when it’s an egregiously bad idea. Gets why Asgore walks around with six children on his soul, slowing him down, eating away at him like rot spreading up a limb, and just waits for the seventh soul to come to him, one way or the other.

(Gets why he didn’t put up much of a fight, that one time the kid got out. Sans is kind of hypothetically grateful that Asgore doesn’t really remember. Some déjà vu, like Pap gets, but nothing that he could pin down. Doesn’t have to know how easy it was for him to give up and surrender his soul and leave them all trapped down here while their whole species’ golden ticket walked out into the sunlight.

Sans doesn’t blame him for that. But Asgore would probably blame himself. So.)

Coni drinks herself into a cheerful haze, and Grillby keeps things _meticulously tidy_ , and Papyrus calibrates his puzzles, and they all light up the Gyftmas tree and dig trash out of the dump and try to pretend everything’s fine. Nobody’s fine. But everybody who’s still around has gotten pretty good at pretending. It’s _why_ they’re still around.

He gets it.

(Why else does he tell so many _shitty_ jokes? It isn’t for _his_ health.)

Doesn’t mean he’s a fan.

What’s interesting is that the soul seems to be driving the encounter. Which is a marked difference from who’s driving the _body_. It definitely the kid, though-- Sans recognizes the, uh, _style_. Flicking quickly through their options, heading straight for the thing they _know_ will get them what they want. Nothing curious or testing about it. It’s, heh, _efficient_.

It’s still a little weird to see them kneel, fold their hands together, close their eyes. It’s not that they haven’t done it before-- the pre-angel days, he supposes, when it was the kid and the not-kid playing tug-of-war with time. It’s that this time they look vulnerable, and Sans hasn’t really thought of the kid as _vulnerable_ since everything broke extremely bad. Even when it becomes really obvious that they’re a kid-- looting the abandoned Snowdin store and sulking on the front step, eating cinnamon bunnies and putting on little passion plays with them between bites, hunched over and hunted like they might need to shiv somebody over it, not that they really needed an excuse-- even then, they didn’t really seem vulnerable.

Real hard to pull one over on somebody with infinite free lives to play with.

And he’s pretty sure nothing’s changed about that part of the equation. They’ve still got time wrapped around their fingers. Even if they didn’t, it’s not like he’s seen anything really scratch the angel. Sans knows he did some kind of damage-- _eventually_ \-- during that first encounter, but there’s no sign of it now. All those wheels are just as pristine as they were the first time, and easier to look at this way, more stable, less… just _less_.

They aren’t vulnerable. They really aren’t. There’s absolutely no reason for his soul to flinch when some unnameable emotion passes like a shadow over their face, pulls their closed eyes a little tight and unhappy at the corners, as they open their mouth.

“Cast me not away from thy presence,” they say, and something cold and ominous and grimly _pleased_ crawls its way up Sans’ spine, some kind of _ah-ha, caught you_ about something he wasn’t even _looking for_.

That’s not how they talk.

He half-expects a wall to slice away and reveal the pitiless nothing behind reality, like before, but nothing happens. Well, nothing _visible_ happens. If the way his bones are halfway to vibrating with something he can’t hear is any indication, _something_ happens. 

(There’s a spike of pain in the back of his skull, but that could be anything at this rate. He’s ignoring that.)

“And take not thy holy spirit from me,” they finish, opening their eyes.

Sometimes he thinks this would all be less weird if the angel’s searching slit-pupiled eyes showed up in that face. Sometimes he thinks it be _even weirder_. As it is, he just gets normal brown eyes, almost as dark as the pupil, barely visible through their lashes in their customary squint.

Whatever that was, it’s apparently over now. The uneasy pressure in the air fades. The whimsalot didn’t even seem to notice, just hums to itself and offers up its mildest, most forgiving attack.

Apparently Sans isn’t the only one who thinks they look vulnerable.

(Vulnerable things don’t maybe control the fabric of the universe with casual, almost dismissive ease. He _hopes_ they don’t, anyway, he hopes there’s not something out there bigger and more confusing and _less tolerant_ than the angel. Seriously, just let them be an apex predator, he doesn’t have the bandwidth for anything else.)

On some level, Sans thinks, the fact that this whimsalot veers immediately and unhesitatingly in the direction of SPARING is actually a bad sign. If Asgore ever gets his seventh soul, if monsters ever do get to the surface, he’s pretty sure they’ll all be dust inside of a month. Even discounting anomalies and reality-warping, if they get enough humans who decide they aren’t really feeling the SPARE part of an encounter… well, there’s a lot more of them, and it didn’t go great the last time, from Sans’ understanding.

So, you know, doomed inside the mountain, doomed outside the mountain. Pretty typical.

But this encounter does go well. And the barrier’s not going down anytime soon. He hasn’t figured out _how_ he’s going to get the kid out this time-- ideally he won’t have to participate in any regicide, but, well-- he’ll deal with it when he gets there. So. It doesn’t really matter.

Usually, at the end of an encounter, everybody just kind of gets on with their business. That’s been especially true with the kid-- even after a positive encounter, most monsters are justifiably a little nervous about spending long periods of time around a human. Back when they were occasionally nice long enough to not kill Papyrus, he was probably the only monster who went out of his way to spend time with them after their encounter, and that’s just-- _Papyrus_.

Whimsalots aren’t quite as skittish as their cousins, but it’s still out of character for one to get in close, much less fit themself right up under the kid’s chin to touch their chest, chasing that red soul right back to its resting place. The kid-- the angel inside the kid-- just stares placidly down at them, benevolently curious, which is an improvement over any of the responses Sans could have predicted, ranging from ‘freeze in a panic’ to ‘swat them like a fly’.

“Don’t give up!” they tell the kid encouragingly, and then fly straight out of the room, which is more like the behaviour he expects from a whimsalot.

Oh yeah. Monsters would do _great_ on the surface. He’s sure it’d all work out _fine_. Also, Asgore’s kids have just been playing some really _hardcore_ hide-and-go-seek this whole time and the moon’s really the planet’s soul.

After patting their chest a couple of times experimentally-- apparently it’s to their satisfaction-- the kid stands back up, predictably wobbly but not alarmingly so.

“welp. congrats on your latest non-murder,” he says dryly.

Okay, that was a little more sarcastic than he meant it to be. Wow, he’s not doing great with being here, huh. What was that hypocritical bullshit about hope and despair, buddy? Yeah, great job. He’s not sure they really do sarcasm, though. It’s probably fine.

From the unimpressed look they give him, it’s not _that_ fine. “Null harm monsters,” they say, faintly accusing. 

He shrugs uncomfortably and starts walking, because if there’s one thing Sans is great at it’s avoiding his mistakes. Time for a subject change. “so. frisk. how’s that work?”

They trail a little bit behind him. He carefully doesn’t keep tabs on them. They’re figuring out the walking thing, it’s fine. “Red soul,” they say, like he might have just forgotten.

To be fair, if they have doubts about his general memory he has only himself to blame. It’s not so great these days anyway. “sure. but how did this all, uh, how did you…”

There’s gotta be some way to phrase this that isn’t either explicitly insulting or vaguely upsetting. _Slam yourself into a pre-pubescent skin suit_ definitely isn’t it, which is probably why it’s the only thing that’s coming to mind.

“human don’t usually walk around with angels?” he tries eventually, although for all he knows they might-- this is the only human he’s familiar with, maybe they’re a late bloomer and their angel was just behind schedule. You’d think it would have come up in the literature before now, but who knows. Maybe Sahaquiel is just unusually chatty.

“Null,” they say placidly, which is a relief on a couple of levels, “Angels very loud, very much. Souls small, important. Vessel cede control to angel-- loudest, control. Yet thus: human soul important.”

They hesitate for a second, picking over their options. They’re getting much better with the whole language project. He’s got a theory it has less to do with familiarity-- they kind of implied they know every language anyway-- and more to do with not formatting their thoughts in an organized way most of the time. A lot of it comes out sounding like free association. “Alone? Choose? Choose. Soul must choose. If loud angel, limit choice. Thus: request only. Soul request: way open.”

“...ok. so you’re the, uh, loudest--” Sans would commit actual crimes to know if this is what they actually mean or if it’s just the best approximation they can come up with for a concept that doesn’t have words. Not, like, _big_ crimes. Academic plagiarism, or tax evasion, or something. “-- person in the human’s body, so you’re driving. and frisk… invited you?”

“Mistake, help,” they say, vaguely, “Request intercepted. Falling.”

Boy oh boy is there ever no way to make “request _intercepted_ ” sound like a good thing that’s supposed to happen.

“can they, uh, uninvite you?” he asks, because he’d feel a lot less like he’s aiding and abetting a body-jacking if that’s on the table.

When it takes them a little while to respond, he assumes they’re fishing for concepts in the word soup of their brain and focuses on trying to construct _a_ mental map of the Core. This hallway isn’t going to head in one direction forever, he can’t just autopilot his way through the whole facility. He’ll settle for an inaccurate one, since it’s mid-restructuring, but just, you know, something that’s not 95% static would be great.

The abrupt spike of stabbing pain on the inside of his skull helpfully reminds him that he _can’t remember that_.

He stops for a second to catch his breath and let that fall back into a manageable background amount of pain, which is when he realizes they aren’t actually behind him anymore. Or they are, but like… _way_ behind him.

“wasn’t supposed to be a hard question,” he says, not looking back, hoping it’ll kick them out of whatever feedback loop of word-selection they’ve trapped themself in. 

The stampede of half-stumbling footsteps indicates they’re tearing down the hallway after him--

_(Found the real knife. Here it comes again.)_

\-- so he _very carefully_ doesn’t flinch, or dodge, or freak out at all. He’s very calm. Everything’s fine. Just a casual stroll with an unpredictable creature that could kill him accidentally in a facility that makes him want to scrape a layer of bone off the inside of his own skull on the off-chance it might help. S’all fine.

(They literally don’t have a weapon, what does he think they’re going to do, _bite him_? Actually you know what, nope, don’t go there.)

They snag the edge of his hoodie, pulling lightly, with both hands, and that’s… actually, that helps, that’s _little kid_ behaviour, not _spiteful murderchild_. Specifically, that’s _anxious_ little kid behaviour, which is enough to reboot Sans’ mind into having actually useful thoughts. He tilts his skull far enough over his shoulder to get a full eye light on them and gives them a careful once-over. Nothing obviously wrong, but that’s not their default neutral face either. Something going on under the surface.

“... you ok?” he checks.

And there it goes-- little flicker of something shifting behind their eyes. They’re _not_ ok. But they just nod guilelessly up at him, like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. It’d probably fool anyone who wasn’t Sans.

Wow, he would be a _terrible_ influence on this kid. He probably shouldn’t pass his bullshitting skills on to a new generation.

They don’t look like they’re going to be shamed into giving it up, either. So either it’s a real no-kidding secret and he’ll have to peel it out carefully, or they’re deflecting because they’ve had too many feelings for one day already. Either way, he’s not going to get very far standing here with a vise gradually tightening on his skull. So he’ll let it slide. _This time_. 

They follow him closely this time, holding on to the back of his hoodie like the second coming of Tiny Papyrus, and chew over their words a little more before _they_ pull a subject change. “Mm. Shape loud? Threads break against loud. Vessel rejection shape become loud. Retain vessel, retain shape small. Safe.”

Yeah, that’s more or less what they implied earlier. Great job with stringing together a bunch of words to say _not much_ , another coveted Sans skill. He’s gotta get this kid some other social influences. “but they _could_?”

This is apparently distracting enough that they can’t handle turning the corner, and he has to reroute them gently before they bank straight into the wall. At least they keep walking. Eventually, with obvious reluctance, they concede, “... soul must choose.”

So Frisk isn’t _totally_ trapped in their own body. That’s something. If it’s true.

“don’t suppose i can have a chat with them,” he says, carefully neutral.

“Relay reports,” they offer, which means either they don’t get the problem or they’re willfully ignoring it. He doesn’t know them well enough yet to guess.

“uh huh.”

After a moment, they abruptly say, “Frisk reports: stop being a jerk,” They sound a little annoyed about it, actually, but not defensive at all. Sans stops and turns to actually look at them, one brow bone raised questioningly. They squint at him for a long moment, then very deliberately and _very slowly_ shrug at him, expression vaguely petulant.

Holy shit, clearly it’s too late, he’s _already_ been a terrible influence on them. The second coming of Tiny Papyrus is picking up Sans’ mannerisms and avoidant bullshit. Combined with Dramatic Sighing™ and an idiosyncratic speech tic. They’re practically a skeleton at this point. He’s so delighted it hurts.

(Could be the residual soul cracks and escalating headache combo pack, but he’s gonna go with “weirdly adorable child”. Hope and despair, et cetera.)

Sans can’t control his face in response to this revelation _at all_ so he looks at the ceiling instead. It only marginally helps, since he can still see them squinting crankily in his peripheral vision. He gestures blindly at the laser trap in the way, reaching for their shoulder.

“gonna jump past these,” he says, because he should at least be able to manage that, it’s a location he can _literally see_ and the Core doesn’t move _that_ fast. But they squirm out from under his hand before he can even touch them, sidestepping a few paces away from him. He blinks down, startled, letting the shortcut collapse before it really opens.

“uh. problem?” They don’t look nervous, or scared. Nothing like that little burst of panic he saw in the kitchen, when they first felt the blue magic. And they’ve gone through shortcuts with him before no problem. Well, _mild_ problems, but just with balance, and it doesn’t seem to bother _them_ , because apparently Sans is the only person who worries at all about them breaking their face.

Their attention strays immediately to the lasers. “Puzzle?”

Sans glances between the kid and the light show a couple of times, processing. Ok. So they’re interested in all kinds of puzzles, and apparently that’s a genuine interest that trumps efficiency. That’s… fair? Sure. 

“it’s not… _not_ a puzzle. kind of the whole core is a puzzle,” he concedes. “kind of. mostly it’s a pain.”

A very literal pain, in his case, but he’s heard enough complaints from Alphys to be pretty sure it’s a metaphorical pain, too.

They lean towards him a little bit-- apparently they’re still wary of being grabbed, which he’s not sure how he feels about-- and pat his elbow. Maybe they’ve just decided that pats can go wherever they can reach. “Stay,” they say, even less explicably, and then, “Puzzle!” with determined anticipation as they walk _straight into a laser_.

“uh, hey, wait!” he snaps, reflexively trying to turn their soul blue-- they don’t even notice-- before he even recognizes that it’s an orange laser and they haven’t been _cut in half_.

They wait patiently for the blue laser to pass, and continue navigating without paying any attention at all to Sans’ incipient breakdown, which is great, sort of. He doesn’t want them to notice. He also doesn’t want them to do _shit like this_. At this rate he’s going to have a stroke before they even find the right room. This little idiot _fell off his couch_ twenty minutes ago-- tripped down the stairs before that-- has collapsed in the middle of a stride _multiple times_ \-- puzzles that require finely-tuned movement do not seem like a great idea for them! He’d have thought that was pretty obvious! It’s not like they’re _unaware_ that they’re clumsy.

But if there’s any way to fuck up a laser trap it’s to mistime a shortcut into one, and while Sans is probably fast enough to dodge if he fucks it up, the kid almost definitely isn’t, and other people react in unpredictable ways to unexpected shortcuts in their vicinity even when they know the trick to them. So going in and just _pulling them out_ isn’t a viable option.

He’s regretting stowing Alphys in his lab to look at the anomaly tracker. If she was still in _her_ lab he could just call and talk her into shutting the lasers off. Sans could probably do it himself, but her file system architecture is a _hot mess_ and he’d have to leave the kid unsupervised to do it, which would almost certainly end in some kind of unmitigated disaster.

It’s fine. _It’s fine_. They synched up to an anchor in his house half an hour ago, if they have to rewind it won’t even be that much of a loss. They can skip the encounter with the whimsalot, even, he can just bring them straight to this hallway, he should be able to get a grip on it. He’ll have to live with the memory of them being diced by a laser, which he’s sure they wouldn’t enjoy much either, but it’s-- fine. They both have plenty of memories of dying. Nothing special. No big deal.

When he’s pretty sure he’s not going to absolutely lose his last nerve, he takes a shortcut to the other side of the puzzle to wait for them. It kind of makes the inside of his skull ring with a vaguely familiar pattern, but it could be worse. Doesn’t trigger anything he _can’t remember_ , so he’ll take it.

They’re humming to themself, a little, as they stop-and-start their way through the layers of lasers. Kind of a cute little song. When they get to the end they do a little hop, like punctuation, and step delicately into his personal space to grab the edge of his hoodie in both hands again. They’re so precious it’s painful, this is the worst.

They look at him for a moment, face at their default neutral, scanning his expression with more focus than usual. He tries to fix his smile a little more firmly into place. Everything’s fine.

They squint at him, and then do that thing where they adjust each part of their face individually, with great care and deliberation, until they’re smiling up at him, wide and symmetrical and casual.

It’s _his_ stupid smile. The one he puts on for most people, when there’s nothing particularly wrong or he’s pretending _really hard_ that there’s nothing particularly wrong and is getting it mostly right. It’s probably the one they’ve seen him making the most. They probably think it’s what he looks like when he’s happy.

This kid is going to kill him.

Specifically, this kid is going to kill him because there is no way he’s letting Asgore get his seventh soul out of them. And Sans doesn’t actually know that he can win that fight.

Get there when he gets there.

“Puzzle solved!” they tell him seriously.

He was right. It is the second coming of Tiny Papyrus.

He was _absolutely doomed_ from the second they decided Pap was who they were gonna emulate. Just _straight up murdered_. Getting his own bad habits all over them was just extra nails in the coffin.

He sighs and pats the top of their head, gently, once. They freeze, blinking up at him neutrally. “good job, saha.”

There’s a flicker of something on their face-- confusion, maybe-- and then a quick dead-eyed check-in with Frisk. As soon as the light comes back on, their expression starts edging into vaguely smug territory. If they had a few more words at their disposal, Sans is pretty sure they’d be starting up a Papyrus Classic YES I AM GREAT Speech.

“yeah, yeah,” he laughs mildly, rolling his eye lights and turning back to the hallway, their fingers sliding along the edge of his hoodie until they’re clutching the back again, “c’mon. there’s probably another one before we get to the center.”

The thing about the Core is that it was designed b̵̷y̴̢ ̧a͞n̸ i̕s҉o̸l̛̕a҉t͟͢i͢o̧͝͠n̢i͡s̷͟t _nope_ , okay, no idea who it was designed _by_ , but they had s͘͏o͘̕m̵̨e͠ wei͠r҉͠d ̡̕͢o͜pi̕͠n̸̵͠i̶̢on̡͘s͞͠ ̵̨̛a͢bo͜͏u̸t͘ _okay_ nevermind. The thing about the Core is it sucks and he hates it. Oh, is he allowed to have that thought? _Great._

The thing about the Core is it’s i̡n̸҉͝h̡͢͡e͞͏͠re̸n̵͢t̷̢͟l͠y ̸u͟ņ͠s͏t̕͞a̸̸b̧l͝e͟ _nevermind_.

The thing about the Core is he has no idea where he is at any given time, which is an experience that Sans doesn’t enjoy and doesn’t have to deal with very often.

Also when it’s in motion like this half the hallways lead to dead drops into an abyss that makes Sans deeply uncomfortable for reasons he’s not examining because he has enough problems right now and he’s not borrowing trouble thanks.

At least Sahaquiel is enjoying themself. They’ve run into five more laser puzzles-- which is at least four more laser puzzles than Sans was expecting, he would _absolutely love_ to be able to remember _a_ layout of the Core, _any_ layout of the Core-- and the kid marches cheerily through each one, humming their little songs for each puzzle.

Sans catches himself humming along under his breath one time and has to power-walk away from them for a little bit to get his shit together. They just skip after him obliviously until they can latch back onto his hoodie, chirping “Puzzle solved!” and waiting for him to reach back blindly and pat the top of their head because it turns out they’re really into positive reinforcement, who knew. This is his life now, apparently.

They’re good at the puzzles, actually, never so much as a hesitation about how they should be moving, which is apparently enough for Sans’ mind to stop teetering on the edge of panic every time they walk into a laser. He doesn’t even realize that he’s falling asleep waiting for them at the end of a long one until he blinks himself awake again and they’re sitting patiently at his feet, arms curled up around their knees and face tilted back to study his skull. They pop up as soon as they see his eye lights-- they are, in fact, getting more comfortable moving in general, which might have something to do with all the practice they’re getting navigating the lasers-- and the sudden movement twinges Sans’ self-preservation instincts _a little_ , but not enough to make him actually flinch, so that’s something.

A good or a bad something, he hasn’t decided yet.

“Awaken!” they tell him sunnily, and then, as expected, “Puzzle solved!”

He’s aware that his expression is doing something soft and stupid and fond, but he can’t seem to make it stop-- the perils of defaulting to a smile; harder to turn it off when you don’t want to be-- so he might as well lean into it. “oh yeah? missed the end of that one. sure you didn’t take a shortcut?”

Their face goes briefly blank, then _outraged_ , then blank again when he chokes on a laugh. After a second, they grab his hoodie and _they_ start walking, dragging him behind them crabbily. He has to just let them lead for a while, laughing into his hands, until he can get himself under control again.

(This is just going to make everything worse, eventually. One way or the other.

Laugh or cry. Pick one.)

Most of the Core facility has been abandoned so far-- the only other monster they’ve actually run into is the whimsalot-- which isn’t that surprising, since it’s still in motion. Sans isn’t really _expecting_ to see another one of Mettaton’s hired idiots skulking about the place this early, so the knight-knight catches him a little off-guard.

Not enough off-guard to let the kid walk right into another encounter, though. He has to give them a little push to get them to stay behind him, and even then they keep trying to lean around him to get a good look. Brat.

The knight-knight gives him the very familiar _don’t I know you from somewhere?_ look and starts lumbering to her feet, using her huge morningstar as leverage. Yeah, no thanks to all of that.

This is a trick that it took him a while to work out. Works best on people who are just familiar _enough_ with him to be sure that they know him, but not how. Which is most people-- that’s a little bit intentional and he really _should_ probably work on the paranoia; one problem at a time-- and even if they don’t remember who he is, they recognize the idea of his existence just enough that a little bit of doubt can grow in the empty edges.

Real useful, doubt. Introduces ideas like _he sure seems confident_ and _he doesn’t **really** mean that, does he_ and _that doesn’t look like a good smile_. Makes all these little cracks in a person’s armor. After that, you just need the right suggestion, in the right tone of voice, to expose all the soft delicate parts.

It’s a good trick. Doesn’t even need an explicit threat most of the time.

He cuts the magic to his eye lights, letting them gutter to empty sockets. When she hesitates-- most people do; it’s unexpected at worst, ominous at best-- he stretches his smile out until it’s _obviously forced_ and suggests, “b e s o m e w h e r e e l s e.”

The knight-knight freezes-- so does the kid, behind him, but he’ll deal with that in a minute-- and a shadow of something flickers behind her eyes--

(shadows of shapes moving in deep water; something shifting, _far away_ but getting closer--

don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes--)

\-- as she finishes rising to her feet, turns on her heel, and walks straight into an empty room. The door clicks and locks behind her. Good enough.

He relaxes, flicking his eye lights back on and folding his hands back into his hoodie pockets. Lets the kid finally lean around his arm, tilting their face around the room curiously. They glance up at his skull sideways, but he just blinks at them patiently until they give up and start pulling restlessly on the edge of his hoodie again, obviously on the hunt for yet another puzzle they can solve.

If only all of his problems were that easy to ignore.

It takes a lot longer than he appreciates to find the place he’s actually looking for-- what he’s pretty sure is the antechamber to the Core facility’s actual _central_ component, whatever that actually _is_ \-- and of course by the time he does find it the place is locked down. And Sans’ skull is killing him. Maybe literally. He doesn’t think he’s actually taking HP damage-- he’d probably be dust already if he was-- but he very literally can’t remember the last time he felt this viscerally bad and _wasn’t_ dying, so whatever this is doing to his overall health probably isn’t _great_.

Get it over with.

If he could open this _fucking_ door.

“bad enough when it’s stationary, how’s anyone supposed to unlock _anything_ when it’s reconfiguring. even find the terminals, probably won’t be able to get back here. _ugh._ ”

He taps his phalanges on the door irritably-- rap-a-tap-tap rap-a-tap-tap-- trying to clear his head enough to focus on actual problem-solving instead of just _endlessly complaining_ about his problems. He’s being productive. It’s a new thing he’s trying. It’s not going great.

“if i could remember what was actually _in_ this room we could shortcut,” he mutters, resting his skull against the metal. It’s cold, which is actually kind of an improvement. Why the hell it has to be so hot in the Core, he has no idea. Normally doesn’t bother him. This is not his greatest day ever. “but i can’t, so we might end up inside a wall. or a lava flow. ugh, i hate the core. it’s all _slippery_ , there’s nothing to get a good grip on.”

He has no idea if that’s because of the way it moves, or if it’s related to whatever’s wrong with it, whatever’s filling his skull with knives. Both. Neither. Who cares.

The kid’s fingers brush his elbow, and he slants a glance at them sideways. “Open eyes,” they say, and that’s all the warning he gets before Judgement sears to life inside his skull.

Normally that doesn’t hurt, but normally his skull isn’t already about three quarters of the way to splintering into a million pieces, so it’s not that much of a surprise that this isn’t a great experience. He grinds his teeth and tries not to be distracting and to pay attention to whatever they’re doing, as much as he actually can when he doesn’t get to _control_ his own eye. At least there’s only one, so Judgement isn’t fighting to make eye contact with all of them at once. Small mercies. He’ll take it.

After scanning over the door a couple of times-- seeing something Sans obviously can’t-- some kind of translucent… net, or matrix, or knot forms at their fingertips, and they touch the door with it just as they close their eye and Judgement ( _finally, holy shit_ ) shuts down.

The door unlocks.

Well, at least one of them is useful.

The door opens.

Sans suddenly, very intensely, _does not want_ to go into that room.

The kid apparently has no such compunctions, because they step over the threshold without hesitation and then stop dead in their tracks. He leans in to grab their arm and pull them out-- _don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes_ \-- before whatever he high key doesn’t want to see does whatever he high key doesn’t want it to do. This is not his first mistake, but it’s the latest in his long line of mistakes.

The next mistake is flicking his eye lights up in the direction they’re staring.

T͝ḩ͠ę̸ ͞c͠͠o̧r̡ę̵̕ ̶i̶̴̸s̷̨ ͡a ̸c̨̢͜orp̶sȩ͢,͘͜ ͢͠o̧̨f͢ c̡̧͠o̢͢u͜r҉s͢͡e̡.  
̵  
H͘e̸͡͞ ̵͘k̢n͜e̷̕͢w͘ t͏h͘a҉͡t̕͏.͠  
̶̷  
̴̸(͢Do̡ ͜y̕͟o̷҉u̶̧͞ ̷̢͜un̨d̡͘͟er̸͡͡s̨̨ta̡͝n̕͞d̡ ͜w̷h̴a͟t͡ y̨͡o̢̢u̶͡ ̧are͞҉?͢)͜͢͠  
̵͟  
(͏A̴ ̷s̡k͘͝e̸̢l̛͘e͝to̴̵͜n, ͘͞͝y̕e͡s̡͟.͠)̴͘  
͞  
(̷W͟ha̸͡t͢͠ ̶e҉l̶se̕?̡͞)̨͜͠

Pain scrapes through his skull, but he can’t actually look away now that he’s seen it. It’s like looking at a--

(mirror image? ha--)

\-- faded photocopy of Sahaquiel, except it’s not inside a scruffy-haired human kid, it’s hanging from _literal chains_ in the middle of an otherwise empty room, and it’s not small enough to hover around that kid in what he’s realizing now is a _very_ compact arrangement of wheels. This one’s bigger than his house, and he has the _very upsetting_ suspicion--

( _vast, distant shapes_ , gliding through liquid--)

\-- that this is just _leftovers_. The wheels are splintered-- not at all dissimilar to soul damage-- and the wings hang limp, half-crushed, in the arc of electricity spitting restlessly in the incomplete circle of the rings.

“what--”

“Baraqiel,” they whisper dully, before he can even put together a whole thought.

( _waking up_ \--)

Another stab of pain grinds through his skull, which, he isn’t a fan, but it does at least break him out of staring at what probably isn’t-- probably? probably isn’t-- oncoming death long enough to actually make contact with the kid’s sleeve, start pulling them back, this is, he doesn’t know what this is, it’s no good, they shouldn’t be here, mistakes were made--

( **stay a while**...)

He freezes-- he didn’t… that wasn’t Sahaquiel… that wasn’t anything, he’s-- and so does the electricity, frozen mid-arc.

( **come here**...)

Something black and viscous drips along the edge of that arc, splatters onto the wheels, frost spreading out from the points of contact. He wants to touch it. _He absolutely doesn’t want that_.

( **everything**...)

He can _hear_ the static whine of reality splitting apart, painfully, with none of the careless precision that Sahaquiel used.

( **is**...)

The void smiles down at them, a gaping wound, and--

( **fine**...)

\--pulls them in.


	17. radarkymography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _can't remember that_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Man Who Speaks in Brackets.

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 1.15-G-- preliminary examination suggests subject is physically analogous to a monster of corresponding developmental phase. The soul is not sufficiently formed to respond to encounters, and is developing at slightly below the expected rate of progress.]

[Lab inexplicably lacks adequately sourced resources on soul development in single-parent incidences, which may account for the discrepancy, as Subject B does not have an identifiable soul.]

[... cognitive load is slightly higher than expected.]

[It doesn’t cry.]

[I expected it to cry.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 1.45-G-- subject’s soul is finally adequate to respond to encounters, but…]

[Possibly adequate is the wrong word.]

[Subject’s soul is… extremely fragile. Thin. Brittle. I have found nothing corresponding to this degree of impairment in the existing literature. If this… condition occurs naturally, it has not been reported. Possibly the condition is fatal at a very early stage of development outside of laboratory conditions.]

[Possibly the condition is a result of an incomplete or unequal admixture between the root soul and Subject B’s… contribution. Inadequate soul base-- the structure of the soul exists, but the substance is, essentially, stretched thin.]

[...]

[Physical development continues normally.]

[It still doesn’t cry.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.36-G-- subject continues to display unusual passivity and lack of response to general stimuli, despite responding with only slightly below-average response time to standard tests for gross motor and reflex development.]

[The possibility was raised that the subject does not perceive hand-sign as language, which would provide a barrier to responsivity. Dr. Tyta has offered to perform standard verbal processing and response testing moving forward.]

[Subject’s physical development has slowed slightly, but is not concerning.]

[No change in the development of the subject’s soul. At this stage, it is considered unlikely that any further soul growth will occur.]

[Subject does not respond in any meaningful way to encounters, so it is difficult to assess the subject’s viability for further development in the project.]

[It doesn’t even play-fight.]

[It just waits to be spared.]

[...]

[...]

[This concerns me.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.71-G-- Dr. Tyta has been removed from the project.]

[Dr. Tyta is fortunate that I did not remove her from existence.]

[...]

[Subject still does not cry.]

[I did not anticipate that this would be a problem.]

[I did not anticipate that my colleagues would perform invasive procedures on my-- on the subject without even consulting me on their viability or value.]

[Subject’s soul is cracked, perhaps irreparably. Subject is now entirely unresponsive. This may be due to the soul injury, or to general trauma, or-- it is impossible to estimate. According to Dr. Tyta, it displayed extremely mild distress during the process, and appeared to attempt to respond to verbal commands and to summon attacks, although it did not accomplish either. She considers this a success.]

[I will literally kill her, in public with witnesses, if she steps foot in my department again. There won’t even be dust left over. I will eradicate her.]

[...]

[Delete this report and record a new one for transcription.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.84-G-- subject remains unresponsive. The soul has not shattered, but it is deeply damaged and is not recovering. Healing has only a very slight effect.]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[It just doesn’t have enough soul to sustain the injury.]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[... I don’t know what else to do.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.85-G-- I have a hypothesis.]

[...]

[That overstates the matter. I have a gamble.]

[...]

[Split the difference. I have an experiment.]

[Subject B-3. It’s the only piece small enough. A fragment of Subject B-2 might be acceptable, but… I don’t want to damage it. Subject B-3 isn’t being utilized in any way. It isn’t critical to Core function. It shouldn’t hurt Subject B to have it removed-- it is entirely dislocated from the main body.]

[Subject CS-1 is derived at least in part from Subject B. Subject CS-1’s physical structure is most analogous to… a monster’s, but the soul is sufficiently variant that Subject B’s influence is possible, even probable. Exposure to more material from Subject B might strengthen Subject CS-1’s soul, correspondent to the manner in which new souls are strengthened by… parents.]

[...]

[Subject’s soul is no longer new, and is unlikely to develop any further than it has, but...]

[...]

[Subject CS-1 is entirely unresponsive and has been for weeks. If it has no effect, then nothing is lost. If it has an adverse effect, nothing is lost. But if it has a positive effect...]

[...]

[Well. This whole project is unfamiliar territory.]

[...]

[...]

[...]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.87-G-- no identifiable change.]

[... hhh.]

[Subject B-3 was successfully integrated. Probably. Like soul structure, it remains latent, although it is not visible when the soul is summoned. Possible it was absorbed into the soul. Possible it was adopted as an attack pattern. Readings are closely correspondent to Subject B-3’s readings before the procedure, so it is unlikely to have dematerialized entirely.]

[But otherwise...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[I just want it to get better.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 2.90-G-- it woke up.]

[I’m… hhh. It woke up.]

[It woke up.]

[...]

[...]

[Stars above, Dings, get yourself together. It woke up. Everything is fine.]

[Subject’s soul is not entirely recovered-- residual damage is still visible in the structure-- but it is almost as strong as it was before the att-- the… Dr. Tyta’s… experiment.]

[...]

[Subject remains generally passive, but is more… attentive.]

[It watches me when I am in containment with it.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 3.65-G-- Subject B-3 is still present in Subject CS-1.]

[It has manifested briefly, at irregular intervals, in Subject CS-1’s left eye socket, where it was integrated. Subject does not indicate any distress during these episodes, but becomes more attentive than usual to its surroundings.]

[So far this manifestation has not occurred in the presence of any monsters, including myself. Otherwise, there are no obvious triggers for the occurrence of the manifested eye.]

[Continue non-interfering observation until such a trigger can be ascertained. It can’t be tested if it can’t be induced.]

[It still does not respond to communication, either to hand-sign or to the verbal recordings provided by Intern R. It does react to general aural stimuli, but does not appear to recognize communication as meaningful in any way.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 4.32-G-- although subject remains highly passive, responses to encounters continue to improve.]

[It has developed several attack patterns clearly derived from my own demonstrations, although all of its attacks are bones. This is not entirely unexpected, given that subject clearly does not read hands and is unlikely to perceive them as a foundational part of its structure. It does create some limitations in subject’s available attacks, but this is not an insurmountable problem.]

[No indication that subject has inherited any other attacks.]

[Subject has not indicated any interest in creating attacks of its own design.]

[Subject so far indicates no ability to perform blue soul manipulation. It has acclimated well to having its own soul turned blue for demonstration purposes, despite initial distress.]

[Literature indicates that most monster chil-- monsters of corollary developmental phase are experimenting with their magic at this time. As the subject indicates no interest in doing so outside of encounters, more encounter testing may be necessary to encourage development.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 5.16-G-- subject has become extremely agitated, and has attempted to leave containment several times.]

[I have a personal-- unsubstantiated-- theory that Subject CS-1 has somehow become aware of Subject P-2, and is attempting to make contact. None of this behaviour predates the creation of Subject P-2, and all of it corresponds to the transition of Subject P-2 from the initialization point to permanent containment nearby.]

[Both Dr. Vulp and Dr. Rivelle claim not to have mentioned Subject P-2 anywhere near Subject CS-1’s containment.]

[Physical development has stalled. Subject is slightly below-average in physical standards, but variance is not far outside the low end of projected growth. Considering the disparity between origination sources, this outcome is mildly surprising but not cause for concern.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 5.21-G-- introduction of Subject CS-1 to Subject P-2 has not at all resolved Subject CS-1’s agitation, but has provided confirmation that this behaviour stems from attempts to reach Subject P-2.]

[Subject P-2 is insufficiently developed to make any corollary attempts to breach containment, but unlike Subject CS-1 at this stage of development it does cry, which may indicate similar agitation.]

[I have consulted peers, and they confirm that this would be unusual behaviour for monsters at corresponding developmental phases. Possibly this is a result of the material from Subject B, or possibly this is a result of isolation in the lab. Or possibly this is the result of Subject CS-1’s faulty soul in some way resonating with Subject P-2’s substantially more robust soul. Or possibly this is the result of an as-yet-undiscovered incident and I really will kill someone this time.]

[Or possibly I am grasping at straws because Subject CS-1 is also crying now and I am losing my mind.]

[...]

[Edit this report before transcription.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Rep--]

[Hhh. Subject CS-1 is currently trying to steal my recorder. While the increased activity caused by the proximity of Subject P-2 is interesting, it is occasionally inconvenient. No, do not climb on that, you will fall off and shatter into a thousand pieces and I do not need that to happen, ideally ever.]

[...]

[Subject CS-1 has stopped trying to climb the stool and is now crying.]

[...]

[You know, there was a time when I worried that you were emotionally and intellectually vacant and I had accidentally created an empty shell that would either die without ever knowing its place in the world or someday activate an unpredicted state and destroy the Underground for unknowable reasons of its own, but I take it back. I miss the days when you didn’t cry. Then all the stress was mostly imaginary and I could talk myself out of it. Now you are a constant reminder that I have no idea what I’m doing and I am probably irreparably damaging two actual children for a cause that is probably hopeless anyway and which almost certainly shouldn’t be accomplished with the lives of children even if it isn’t, something something ethics, I’m not sure, that is not my area of expertise.]

[Well, at least the crying stopped. Subject still does not respond to communication, but does perceive audio stimuli and can apparently be distracted from its distress by the incoherent monologuing of a sleep-deprived scientist that no one can understand anyway. Marvelous. They’ll give me an award any day now.]

[Right before they cancel the project and I have to figure out what to do with a pair of subjects with even less socialization than I had, no language skills whatsoever, and no extant literature relating to their care and upkeep that is not highly classified.]

[Technically speaking, I suppose they should be euthanized.]

[...]

[Well that was an unpleasant thought.]

[...]

[Subject is crying again.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 5.45-G-- subject is--]

[...]

[What in the Underground was that noise supposed to be.]

[I think the subject is attempting to mimic wingdings. It doesn’t work like that, for the record. This is just uninterpretable garbage that you’re producing right now, it only artificially sounds like me. Although I suppose in your defense none of my colleagues would be able to tell the difference, so I can hardly expect you to.]

[You should really be using your own font if you’re going to start doing this. I know you have one. It was extremely inconvenient to justify your subject classification, you know. I suppose I could have explained fonts, but there’s a whole culture lecture there that I am supremely disinterested in giving to a panel that doesn’t particularly care about skeleton culture to begin with and would care even less that I am trying to apply it to test subjects I “created in the lab” out of some kind of pathology about being the last surviving member of my species. I’m reasonably certain they’re just humoring me at this point.]

[... actually, framed that way, your existence is rather depressing.]

[...]

[Subject has stopped attempting to mimic wingdings and has instead attached itself to my legs. It is not otherwise doing anything that I can identify. If this is an attempted attack it is highly ineffective, but I suppose any interaction is technically positive progress.]

[I’m not sure that attempt at mimicry actually qualifies as an attempt at responding to communication, given that it was not in the subject’s native font.]

[Ah. And now the latest escape attempt. You know, these would be more effective if you waited until I wasn't looking directly at you.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 5.54-G-- wait!]

[Get back here!]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 5.54.b-G-- subject escaped containment and attempted to reach Subject P-2’s containment.]

[Subject vociferously objected to being constrained and retrieved by blue magic, but was pacified when it appeared to identify that I was the source of the magic. Possibly the distress derived not from the general constraint but from the lack of an obvious originator thereof.]

[Or possibly it just exhausted itself. It is hardly the most vigorous individual.]

[Subject continued to mimic wingdings incoherently until returned to containment, and is now sulking under the examination table.]

[If it’s any consolation, you almost managed to say an actual word, although given that word was ‘coffee’ I don’t think it was intentional.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 6.72-G-- the overhead light in subject’s containment has gone out.]

[This was discovered several hours after the surge which caused the fault in the wiring, because I was busy chasing idiots out of Subject B’s containment in the Core and repairing the damage they caused. Because apparently I am both the facility security and an electrician now. Truly, I am making the most of those doctorates.]

[Subject was highly distressed when I entered but seems to have calmed down after being lightly restrained with blue magic, thank the stars for small mercies. It is enough of an inconvenience to repair this-- highly questionable, by the way-- wiring with nothing but my own magic for lighting, I don’t really need a crying subject trying to climb up on the examination table with me.]

[Oh, that’s better. Subject has produced its own soul, improving general illumination.]

[... wait.]

[...]

[Come here. No, don’t-- fine, I’ll come to you. Look at me.]

[Nod if you understand me. Like this. Yes.]

[Shake your head, like this. Good. Now, I am going to continue shaking my head. If you can understand me, you will nod instead.]

[... not mimicry, then.]

[It isn’t even watching my hands… how can…]

[Oh!]

[Yes, these are my hands. No, don’t-- alright, fine. Subject is now examining my hands, coincidentally making it impossible to hand-sign. Don’t touch the holes, please. Can you still understand me? Nod if you can.]

[...]

[Remarkable.]

**click**

* * *

[Project Rainy Day, Subject CS-1, Personal Report 6.48G-- interview with subject.]

[CS-1, how do you interpret what you hear when I speak?]

[Interesting.]

[And does that differ in any way from what you hear when P-2 speaks?]

[Does it differ in any way from what you hear when strangers speak?]

[Yes, I know you listen to my conversations. That is the whole point of this line of questioning.]

[Interesting.]

[Hm?]

[Oh. I don’t know yet. Data.]

[You’re very interesting, CS-1.]

* * *

[CS-1-- hm?]

[Oh. That is your… ah. Well, technically it is your designation. It’s… like a name.]

[... what did you call me? Where did you hear that?]

[... ah. Yes, I suppose I do talk to myself sometimes. I am… unaccustomed to being understood in my native font. I should watch my tongue around you, hm?]

[You are precocious, CS-1. At any rate, you should not call me that. My full name is W. D. Gaster. It would be most appropriate for you to call me “Doctor”.]

[Ah, no. “Doctor” is my title. It’s… hm. I suppose we should briefly address social conventions.]

* * *

[CS-1, come here. Yes, stand right there. Very good.]

[Open your eye, CS-1. No, not those. You know what I mean.]

[Ah!]

[No, no, everything is-- I’m fine, CS-1.]

[Oh. No, don’t do that. I’m fine. No crying.]

[Everything is fine.]

[I’m not angry.]

* * *

[CS-1. Do you understand what you are?]

[... a skeleton, yes.]

[But what else?]

* * *

[Here-- this is my soul. You should be able to CHECK me.]

[No, it won’t be like last time.]

[Yes, like that.]

[Do you notice anything different between my soul and yours?]

[Yes.]

[Something went wrong, perhaps. When you were created. I’m not sure.]

[It means you are fragile and will need to be careful not to sustain injury. You must absolutely never allow yourself to be hit, CS-1. It is difficult to estimate the power behind another’s attack until it lands, and you do not have the spare soul to eat that cost. Do you understand?]

[... no, P-2’s soul is not like yours. It is slightly stronger than would be expected of a normal monster at a similar developmental phase, in fact.]

[... yes, I’m glad as well.]

* * *

[CS-1. It is time for a test.]

[Stand right here.]

[Now, be very careful.]

[Do you see the target? Yes. I would like you to destroy that.]

[Without moving from where you are, CS-1.]

[Not with bones.]

[That is the point of the test, CS-1. To find out if you can.]

[Of course I think you can. Why else would I be testing this?]

[Go on.]

[Oh. I didn’t realize you had inherited--]

[OH.]

[THAT IS ENOUGH, CS-1.]

[STOP IMMEDIATELY.]

[...]

[...]

[Everything is fine, CS-1.]

[Do not tell anyone that you did this test.]

[Do you know what a secret is?]

[Yes. This is a secret now.]

[Several reasons.]

[I’m not angry.]

* * *

[What?]

[I don’t know what you mean.]

[... hm.]

[Wait a moment. I have-- somewhere--]

[Ah. Here. Listen to this, CS-1-- does it sound like this?]

[Music, CS-1. From this response, may I infer that this is not the sound you refer to?]

[Similar. Hm.]

[... no, no I don’t know what that is. I don’t know where you would have heard music at all. You shouldn’t be exposed to any here…]

[Hhh. I’ll speak with the others. If you are being exposed to stimuli, it should be recorded in the logs…]

[No, you are not in trouble.]

* * *

[Hm?]

[Ah, these-- I was…]

[... it happened when I was very young. It isn’t important. Please focus on your tests, CS-1.]

[My hands? No, it wasn’t the same… event.]

[I touched something dangerous.]

[... I touched something dangerous twice.]

[Several reasons. Predominantly, because I thought the potential result was more important than not touching it again.]

[Mixed results.]

[Consider this an example of the reasons not to handle unfamiliar equipment without supervision, CS-1. You do not recover particularly well from traumatic injury.]

[Hm?]

[... no, it doesn’t hurt anymore.]

[... thank you, CS-1.]

[I do not want you to hurt, either.]

* * *

[CS-1, collect P-2 and follow me.]

[Yes, we are leaving the lab. Stop asking questions.]

[Follow me and do not stop.]

[Everything is fine.]

* * *

[Sans. Your name is Sans. Do you understand?]

[That’s always been your name. Do you understand? Your name is Sans. Focus, please. This is important.]

[Mind your brother. What? P-2-- Papyrus. Yes, he’s your brother.]

[I can’t stay here with you. I have to be at the lab. Someone will come to check on you, I’ll… arrange something.]

[Because it will raise questions if I’m not.]

[Because I don’t want to answer them.]

[Several reasons.]

[Me? I’m… you know my name.]

[Oh. No, I’m not your brother. I’m…]

* * *

[Snow.]

[Window.]

[Television.]

[You know what a book is, Sans. You’ve seen them before.]

[Oh. You want… yes. I suppose… yes.]

[Ahem. Once upon a time--]

* * *

[Sans? Where are you.]

[This is not a game.]

[... Sans?]

[Where could-- how--]

[AGH FUCK.]

[Sans?! Where did you-- oh no, absolutely not, do not.]

[That’s not a word for little skeletons.]

[Because you scared me.]

[Yes, of course I can be scared.]

[Oh. No, not-- I was worried about you.]

[I’m not afraid of you.]

[It’s all right.]

* * *

[What happened?]

[I’m not angry. I just need you to explain the situation.]

[So that I can ensure it is resolved and does not recur.]

[...]

[I see.]

[Does this happen often?]

[...]

[...]

[I assure you that I am not angry, Sans. You are a child. It is to be expected that you will be emotionally volatile.]

[However, we must devise a method to reduce… collateral damage, when you experience this kind of… stress. This cannot happen again. For several reasons.]

[...]

[Here. Give me your hands.]

[Observe. You have fifteen phalanges on each hand. Thirty total. Ten distal, ten middle, and ten proximal. How many ways are your phalanges divisible?]

[Very good. Here is my suggestion. When you experience stress, whether internal or external, before you take any action, count each of your phalanges individually. If you are very stressed, perform this operation while grouping phalanges into discrete divisible units.]

[It is a repetitive low-priority task which provides some visual and tactile feedback and creates an artificial delay in…]

[... hhh. I find it relaxing to create systems. Nevermind. I will continue to consider options.]

[Hm?]

[... oh.]

[Very well.]

[Alert me if you do not find it useful and we will find another solution.]

* * *

[No, you can’t come with me to the lab.]

[Several reasons.]

[It is not an excuse, it is an explanation.]

[... yes, alright, I suppose it isn’t a very good explanation.]

[What would you even do at the lab?]

[You aren’t an experiment, Sans. You never were an experiment, because you have always been Sans. Remember?]

[This is one of the reasons.]

[I’m not angry.]

* * *

[What?]

[Well?]

[What do you want me to do about it? I cannot control other people’s children. I scarcely control either of you.]

[I don’t-- Sans. Sans, come back.]

[... hhh.]

[Oh. Papyrus. Hello.]

[... yes. Thank you. I do feel better.]

[Sans tells me that you have been unhappy.]

* * *

[Hm?]

[Can it wait, Sans?]

[I’m in the middle of something.]

[You were the primary focus of my work then, of course you saw more of me. I have other work now that requires my attention.]

[... wait. That is not what I--]

[Sans, no, that is not--]

[Hhh.]

* * *

[So. I saw that you came to the lab today.]

[You are not as subtle as you think.]

[Yes, I am angry.]

[You are old enough to know better than this, Sans.]

[No, of course I don’t expect--]

[You cannot be so--]

[WOULD YOU LET ME FINISH.]

[...]

[...]

[I’m-- I’m sorry.]

[I didn’t intend to yell.]

[I just… you can’t… it’s dangerous.]

[It’s dangerous for you to be there, Sans.]

[I’m sorry.]

* * *

[Sans, Papyrus, I-- oh.]

[Who is this?]

[A friend. I see. And does your friend have a name.]

[Hm.]

[No, no, it’s-- fine.]

[You two… have fun?]

[Yes, Sans, I know what fun is.]

[Very funny.]

* * *

[Where did you get this?]

[Well, where did she get it?]

[The dump. You’ve been going to the dump.]

[Sans.]

[Yes, I know.]

[It’s dangerous.]

[No, not like-- those are human things, Sans. Humans are careless and dangerous creatures. It is impossible to guess what they will discard.]

[I just don’t want you to get hurt.]

[Yes.]

[Fine.]

[Take care of your brother.]

[Yes, I’m leaving.]

[I’m not… hhh. No. I’m not angry.]

[I have work to do.]

* * *

[Did you build this?]

[Alphys? Oh, your little friend. No, I remember.]

[Interesting.]

[Hm?]

[Nothing.]

* * *

[What is all this?]

[Yes, I can see that it’s math, Sans. What is the point of it.]

[And why did you feel so compelled?]

[...]

[Hm.]

[No, I’m not angry.]

[You made an error, here.]

[Come along. I’ll show you how to fix it.]

* * *

[Yes, I am taking Alphys on as an intern. No, you cannot be an intern with her.]

[You know why.]

[Why must we keep having this discussion?]

[I am not being unreasonable. I am keeping you safe.]

[It isn’t worth the risk.]

[My career has nothing to do with this, you idiot child.]

[I don’t want you to be hurt.]

[You think it wouldn’t have been excellent for my career to deliver a weapon like you? Or Papyrus?]

[Why do you think I took you away, Sans. Why do you think I destroyed records. Why do you think I brought you to the opposite end of the Underground. Why do you think I-- ]

[Why do you think that is, Sans. Tell me.]

[...]

[...]

[I’m sorry.]

[That was--]

[No, Sans. You are not a weapon.]

[I’m sorry.]

[I’m tired. I’m just tired. Ignore me.]

* * *

[Oh. Sans. Did I wake you?]

[Nothing. Well. A project. It isn’t important.]

[Hm?]

[It isn’t part of my work. It’s a personal project.]

[Yes, I have personal projects.]

[... yes, that is what I meant by fun. You may laugh now.]

[...]

[Yes, if you want to.]

[Well. Come here, then.]

[You will need a grounding in quantum mechanics before we can get anywhere.]

* * *

[Sans. Come here. Bring Papyrus.]

[What? No, nothing is wrong.]

[I am bringing you to the lab.]

[Yes. Yes. No? Please speak more slowly.]

[Just to visit.]

[I have... made arrangements.]

[It is… as safe as it can be. You will need to stay close to Alphys. She will show you where you are allowed to be. And you must not interrupt anyone. Or touch anything. Certainly do not eat anything. And watch your brother. And come find me if you feel at all… watched.]

[Maybe. Maybe, Sans, not yes. We’ll have to… see how this goes.]

[Yes, yes, calm down.]

* * *

[Hm?]

[Particle accelerator.]

[Don’t touch that, Sans. Honestly. Three seconds ago you didn’t know what it was even called.]

[Well, you still don’t know what it does, do you? So don’t touch it.]

[... yes, it accelerates particles.]

[Fine. Yes. Very funny.]

* * *

[I have considered your proposal.]

[Don’t make that face at me.]

[Yes, you did. You aren’t subtle. That you think you are subtle is my greatest failing as both guardian and scientist.]

[What? Oh. Yes, I will permit you to intern at the lab this year.]

[Quieter please, Sans.]

[Quieter.]

[Stars have mercy.]

[Thank you. Now. There are caveats.]

[Yes, yes, you’re very funny.]

[You will still be responsible for Papyrus. He cannot be left alone in the house while we are both gone. If you bring him to the lab, you must make absolutely certain that we do not see a repeat performance of The Glowshroom Incident.]

[I don’t care if it was hilarious. It was poor laboratory etiquette.]

[Yes, I laughed. No, that does not mean you win. Sans. Sans! That does not mean you win!]

* * *

[If I have to read one more half-baked insipid-- oh. Sans.]

[Hhhh. Reading.]

[Tiresome.]

[If you like. I will be doing actual work and not thinking about it.]

[Yes, very funny.]

* * *

[Hm?]

[I did tell you it was tiresome.]

[Of course he is wrong, he’s an idiot.]

[Absolutely not. Let him go on thinking he is the smartest person in the room and that everyone finds him fascinating. This way he is tiresome, not dangerous. There are enough of us doing real work to counterbalance him. Irritate him, and he may become dangerous.]

[I do not care.]

[Sans, I do not care.]

[How many times.]

[Sometimes science is not entirely data. Sometimes, I have been told, one is intended to talk to people and secure funding. He is not good at data. He is good at funding.]

[Well, I don’t want to think about funding. Or people. I want to think about data, systems, and the intersections thereof. People like him exist to ensure that people like me can ignore things like funding.]

[Don’t irritate him. You don’t even have to read his work, I have no idea why you are so worked up about this.]

[Here, check these equations.]

* * *

[What. Have you done.]

[This is not even my work. It is your work. Submit articles under your own name if you so determined to make a nuisance of yourself.]

[That was a joke. Do not submit articles under your own name. You are a child and someone might read one and ask questions I do not want to answer.]

[You are a child to me.]

[That is not the point. The point is that I told you not to do this.]

[No, not specifically this, but I told you not to irritate him.]

[A rebuttal article is an irritation! I am irritated, and it is not even directed at me!]

[...]

[You are the most vexsome creature in my life, and you are extraordinarily lucky that I am so very fond of you.]

[Yes, fine. Now go find your brother before he does something well-intentioned and disastrous, like you.]

* * *

[No, I will not be at the lab today. Keep an eye on Papyrus.]

[Because I will be at the Core.]

[No, you cannot come with me.]

[Several reasons.]

[Fine. Because it is dangerous.]

[None of the interns are permitted at the Core, Sans. Most of the scientists are not permitted at the Core after what happened last time I let unskilled idiots touch it. It is sensitive, temperamental, and critical to the continued functioning of our society. There are perfectly good reasons for it to be secure.]

[You don’t have to like it, you just have to abide by it.]

[Sans. If you follow me to the Core, by any method-- do not give me that look-- there will be consequences. Consequences I may not be able to control.]

[Do not put me in that position.]

[Be good. Mind your brother.]

[Everything is fine.]

* * *

[Sans, if you do not stop writing these rebuttals I am going to lock you in the basement and make you write your refutations on the walls with nothing but condiments.]

[No, I am not being serious.]

[Wait. Yes, I am being serious. About the rebuttals. Stop this immediately.]

[It doesn’t matter whose name you put on them, you menace. Your tone is perfectly recognizable even through jargon. You are not subtle. I have explained this many times.]

[He is an idiot! That is not what concerns me!]

[Yes, I am concerned, you absolute brat!]

[I do not want someone to recognize you and--]

[...]

[...]

[No, of course not.]

[No.]

[I’m not angry.]

[Please just. Please. Be more careful. Keep your head down. Learn. Just… be careful.]

[I cannot protect you from everything.]

* * *

[You have to be more careful.]

[I know he didn’t mean to. That isn’t the point.]

[You have to be more careful. Are you listening? You.]

[You can’t trust everyone you meet to be careful. You can’t trust everyone you meet to-- to care about you. People will hurt you, without even meaning to, and it won’t be their fault. It will be yours. Because you let yourself be vulnerable.]

[You let yourself be hurt.]

[You have to… be more careful.]

[...]

[...]

[What?]

[No.]

[Everything is fine.]

* * *

[You. Are. Unbelievable.]

[Yes, Sans. I saw you. Because, for the thousandth time, you are not subtle.]

[Yes. I am angry. I am very, very angry.]

[You are unfathomably fortunate that I was the only one who saw you. You are UNTHINKABLY fortunate that there were no immediate effects from exposure. You will be sitting through several hours of testing to identify any long-term effects at home, which I am certain will thrill you.]

[My exposure is irrelevant! You are not me! There are good reasons for you to never go near the Core, how many times must I say it!]

[Among other things, yes. Yes, there are people there who might recognize you. It has been a long time, but they might. I have taken-- I--]

[...]

[Do you have any concept of the things I have done to keep you safe.]

[No. No, of course you do not.]

[Fine.]

[Let us discuss what your life has cost.]

[No, you wanted this. You must always have all the information. Well, fine. You will get it. Sit down.]

[...]

[...]

[Do you remember the tests when you were very young.]

[Yes. You remember when you saw my soul. Not the CHECK. The first time. Do you remember what my statistics were then?]

[Of course you do. Your memory is impeccable.]

[Look again.]

[Do not argue with me. Look.]

[Yes.]

[Yes.]

[It should be even higher.]

[Did you know that your LV does not increase if you simply watch someone die. If you allow it to happen. If you manufacture it.]

[Intent.]

[I am extremely analytical. There is nothing emotional about arranging the circumstances of a potential accident. It is a sequence of projected events. Remove intent from the process. Simply design. And wait. And watch as absolutely nothing happens to your soul. And then sweep up the dust.]

[It is astonishingly easy.]

[Three.]

[They worked closely on the project. They had family outside New Home, and might travel far enough, regularly enough, to see one of you. It was an unacceptable risk.]

[I did the analysis. I calculated the odds. I made rational decisions.]

[You do not have to like them. I do not like them. But you will understand them.]

[I arranged the removal of three obstacles--]

[No, I am not.]

[That is not what we are discussing.]

[Fine. Three people, Sans. That is what it cost to remove you and Papyrus from the lab, and hide you in Snowdin, and ensure that no one who knew enough to matter would ask questions. But there were always more than three people involved.]

[Every time you take a risk like this, you increase the chances that one of them will notice you.]

[And Sans?]

[I will not allow you to be taken. I will not allow you to be used for your intended purpose. I will not allow you to be hurt. I will not allow it.]

[I am extremely analytical.]

[Let’s not find out what the final tally would be.]

* * *

[...]

[...]

[How can I help you, Sans?]

[You are not subtle. I invite you imagine how you might improve your attempts at skullduggery, but at this stage I would not anticipate success.]

[... I am not angry. I am…]

[I am just tired.]

[Go to bed.]

[Hhh. No, of course not. You are not a child. Are we having this fight now?]

[I have never wanted to fight with you, Sans. That is not the point.]

[If you want to yell, we should go somewhere else. Papyrus will be upset.]

[... of course I care about him. I care about both of you.]

[There is nothing I can tell you that will improve this situation, Sans. It is what it is. I should not have told you, and I am sorry that you must now bear that weight. I am not sorry that I did it. I would do it again.]

[I know.]

[Of course.]

[Yes.]

[... if that is what you want.]

[I understand.]

[Take care of your brother.]

* * *

[Oh. Sans.]

[...]

[I-- are you well?]

[...]

[No. Of course not.]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[Hhh.]

* * *

[What are you doing here?]

[... I will have you assigned to another project.]

[It has nothing to do with your competency. As you are well aware.]

[You are not being punished, Sans. Stop being ridiculous. You were the one who wanted--]

[I am treating you like an adult. One that I cannot work with.]

[How dare--]

[Get out. Just-- just go home. You are on mandatory leave.]

[Yes, Sans. I can. I am the Royal Scientist.]

[Do not test me.]

* * *

[Sans. I will see you in my office. Now.]

[Sit.]

[Must you make every little thing a-- Fine. Don’t sit. I don’t care.]

[...]

[Does the Core project still interest you?]

[Just answer the question, Sans.]

[...]

[Very well. Submit your proposals. You will work with Alphys.]

[Very easily. We will not work together. You will work with Alphys. I will review both of your work and make my recommendations on the basis of that work. If you cannot bring yourself to translate wingdings, I will transcribe my notes.]

[You are a good scientist, Sans. Our… falling out should not affect that. You were correct. I was being emotional.]

[You may go.]

[...]

[... just go, Sans.]

* * *

[Dark, darker, yet darker…]

[The darkness keeps growing…]

[The shadows cutting deeper…]

[Photon readings negative…]

[This next experiment seems…]

[Very…]

[Very…]

[Interesting…]

[...]

[What do you two think?]

* * *

[No tests today.]

[I will be in the Core. I am not to be disturbed.]

[You two can double-check the readings from yesterday. Something… just check them again.]

[What? No, I-- my health is not your concern, Sans.]

[Return to your work.]

* * *

[Hhh. I just don’t know what to do with him anymore.]

[Or you, for that matter.]

[These readings don’t… are you deteriorating? Is something wrong?]

[... if you could tell me, I suppose you would. For the record, this would be a marvelous time to reveal an undisclosed ability to communicate. Stars know Sans took his time, it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise.]

[...]

[Talking to a machine now, Dings. Oh yes, doing very well.]

[Who is-- if you don’t have clearance--]

[Sans? What are you doing h--]

[!]

* * *

[Sans.]

[Everything is fine.]

[I’m not angry.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny!Sans: _hugs his weird science dad_  
>  Gaster: is this an attack or are you just being inexplicable again?
> 
> Also, once he figured out how to use them tiny!Sans absolutely used shortcuts to scam his dad out of free piggyback rides and also (accidentally) scare him to death.  
> 
> 
> And then, because narrative bookends are my kink:  
>   
> Sans: listen doc i know i’ve been kind of a jerk lat--  
> Sans: _uh this is not what i wanted_!  
> Sans: _holy shit i killed my dad i killed my dad i scared him to literal death i killed--_  
>  Sans: …  
> Sans: … uh why am i crying?


	18. recondite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Eighteen of _in action how like an angel_.

Sans doesn’t spend a lot of time in the void.

 _Technically_ , he spends no time in the void. He’s pretty sure time doesn’t really _work_ there-- spent a couple of really bad loops debating with himself what the chances were of getting the timing right to just drop a shortcut halfway and fall into it, on the off-chance that at least that way he could _stop looping_ ; did the math and everything-- although he’s never tested it. Mostly because he is _aware_ of the void, but doesn’t _think_ about the void, the same way he’s aware of a lot of things that don’t exist but doesn’t try to think about them unless he’s feeling masochistic. Or he’s escorting an angel through a giant neon DO NOT ENTER sign.

Except not quite the same.

Because somewhere in the back of his head, he had kind of thought that the empty space he flicked through between point a and point b of any given shortcut, fast enough that it didn’t even fully register most of the time, wasn’t _really_ empty. It wasn’t _really_ nothing, nothing is an idea that doesn’t have any tangible weight, it’s not _achievable_ , even in a hard vacuum there are stray atoms, virtual particles, quantum vacuum zero-point energy, _dark matter_. It’s not like he’s taking shortcuts through _outer space_ \-- if he was, the barrier would have a significant flaw somewhere that somebody would have noticed-- and that’s as close to genuinely empty as it gets in tangible reality. Maybe it wasn’t even really a place, just a component of the shortcut process that, for some reason, fell under the _can’t remember_ category of thoughts. For all he knew, shortcuts literally just wiped him out of existence in one place and rewrote him in another one, and that split-second cold-dark-empty was what death actually felt like all the way through, past the soul-shattering part. Just something else his mind was filling in with blank space because trying to look directly at it was just going to hurt.

And it does kind of hurt. But it’s definitely a place, and it’s also _just empty_.

It’s a little like how he imagines drowning.

For there being exactly _nothing_ here, it’s shockingly heavy, the weight of emptiness pressing not so much down on him as _into_ him. Pressure. There’s supposed to be extremely high pressure as the bottom of the oceans, in the black trenches where only highly specialized life can survive, blind fish with constellations of teeth, generating their own light because nothing reaches them, so uniquely suited to their inhospitable environment that venturing closer to the surface kills them. Anything that doesn’t belong, that doesn’t acclimate to that pressure, is just _crushed_. Secretive creatures, snaking liquid through the cold, and it’s impossible to know if those are eyes or teeth, if it’s curious or _hungry_ , if there’s any difference. Nothing here. There’s nothing here. (But what if nothing is the shape _and_ the sea.) Converse: outer space. Extremely low pressure. Life can’t hold itself together under those conditions, differentials bursting anything fragile enough, vapour boiling off from inside tissues if necessary, bones becoming brittle in response to reduced force. Space doesn’t crush invaders-- it just wears them down to nothing.

He can’t even be sure he’s _seeing_ nothing. His eye sockets are open, and even if he can’t summon enough control to activate his eye lights he _should_ be seeing, but he can’t prove that he _is_ with how much there’s _nothing here_. Maybe he’s blind. Maybe he’s _dead_.

Some instinct in the back of his mind is _reaching_ \-- home, go home, go home, go home-- and nothing’s happening. No shortcuts out of this abyss. One way trip. (Or someone else is at the wheel.)

He feels like he’s about to literally fall apart, a handful of disconnected bones scattering into the void. (That joke was a lot more entertaining when he was a kid and it was a ploy to get Pap’s attention.) It doesn’t even feel like _dying_ , which is maybe worse, because dying is a pretty short experience all told, and up till now he’s been pretty sure that dead was just-- _click_ , lights out, he didn’t think he’d be _aware_ of it, he doesn’t remember being _aware_ of it, and this just _keeps going_ , might keep going _forever_.

He was touching the kid. He had their sleeve in his fingers. Stars, are they here too? It wasn’t a shortcut, but he doesn’t know what else it was.

(A _fall_.)

(What’d he get closer to?)

(Gravity.)

Something nearby (or far away, or _inside him_ , who can tell) makes what he wouldn’t call exactly _a noise_ , but he doesn’t know what else he’d call it either. A color. A concept. A very low, drawn-out tone vibrating in his marrow. █████, his mind helpfully suggests, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

 **s a h a q u i e l** , says _absolutely nothing_ , one sound at a time, like a _sigh_.

Very abruptly, as if in answer, what looks like a thousand terrifyingly familiar eyes, glitter-golden and sharp, snap into existence, ignited by some internal fire, arrayed in dizzying interwoven rings, spinning and twirling. His own eye sparks, fitfully, like damp tinder, before the magic finally catches and it blazes open, what seems like impossible blue in this bleak lack of space. It sits listlessly in his skull, not chasing its alien partners for once, and Sans can’t pull together a sufficiently coherent thought to even try to investigate this situation, to check whether the kid is with him, to look for _the rest of Sahaquiel_ , because eyes are just one of several parts, generally upsetting parts but right now _he’ll take it._

The eyes glide frictionlessly through nothing, patterns that part of him wants to graph and calculate, leaving faint after-images of golden light that quickly evaporate, sink into the black ink of absence, _consumed_. But nothing touches them, no residue of darkness left behind on those razor eyes, nothing muffling the intelligence behind them. Whatever angels are, whatever makes Sahaquiel _this_ , doesn’t care about the crushing pressure and the literally bone-chilling cold and the _unforgiving_ emptiness of this place.

(Deep sea fish, making their own light, _thriving_ where everything else becomes pulp.)

███ ████ ███ , says what must, he realizes, be _Sahaquiel_. Their voice is a subsonic pulse, too big to hear, holy shit, they weren’t kidding when they said _loud_ ; so loud and deep and _resonant_ that he can’t even really hear it, has to track it by the aftershocks, panes of glass rattling in their windows during earthquakes. It’s like listening to a mountain talk, but from _inside it_. It’s like overhearing a conversation between barometric pressure systems, right at the edge of a nascent hurricane. It’s not the kind of thing he’s supposed to hear, so he _can’t_ , and not even in a painful, familiar _can’t remember that_ way-- _literally_ he can’t, he’s not built to hear this. Whatever he’s hearing _now_ is probably too much.

As the peerless edges of their wheels slice into his field of view, sweeping in ever-tighter circles, closing down around them and cutting off his view of the endless black expanse, something hysterical in his ribcage finally takes a breath. It’s still dark-- even with the combination of Sahaquiel’s eyes and his own spilling light into the void, the darkness never seems to really recede-- but there’s an _edge_ to it now, a wall of tightly-interwoven rings, resolutely gold wherever he actually looks. (And if, in his peripheral vision, those wheels warp and twist, shattered glass, corroded steel, gilt peeling away from mirror shards, pits and hollows and twisted angles-- if there’s _damage_ and _scars_ and _rot_ somewhere in those wheels; if there’s ancient murder bleeding from the holes in their form-- he’s getting the distinct impression that it’s not his business.)

And the kid is here. He’s still holding their arm with one hand, and he doesn’t really feel like letting go, to be honest-- they can at least be moored to _each other_ even if there’s nothing else here, and he has no idea if there are gravitational forces here, if there are _any_ forces here, _probably not_ but he doesn’t want to test it and find out-- so that’s going to keep happening. The weirdest part, maybe, is the way that their eyes are still occupied-- still neutral brown, peering at his sideways through their eyelashes, the now-familiar non expression that apparently characterizes the angel waiting for input, waiting to decide what it feels about something. Reconciling angel-in-the-kid and angel-literally-surrounding-them is kind of… a lot.

“sahaquiel?” he checks, because he’s _pretty sure_ , but not _absolutely sure_ , and if this is Frisk they’re maybe gonna not be totally fine with this situation. Sans isn’t totally fine with this situation. Whatever this situation is.

 **s a h a q u i e l** , agrees _nothing_ , a hundred times, like a swarm of synchronized insects. Because that’s not creepy.

“Yes,” says the kid, placid as ever, as a trio of golden eyes angle down to circle their head briefly, peering at him. It’s eerie as hell to see the same alien intelligence in gold and brown, in disembodied raptor eyes and mild, slightly squinted human eyes.

“Safe,” they add soothingly, so whatever his expression is right now must not be great.

“i have doubts,” he says, but already he’s feeling less hysterical, less like he’s going to spontaneously disintegrate. There’s light, there’s edges, there’s the kid-- he has _no idea_ what’s happening or what he should be doing, but hey, it could be worse. It literally _was_ worse thirty seconds ago.

Which is probably why the void chooses this moment to reassert its creepy superiority with a noise like a high-powered drill, a thin shrieking whine of incoherent white noise interrupted at irregular intervals by crackling pops, like the snap of a lightbulb going out. It has him double-checking the angel’s eyes nervously, but as far as he can tell they’re fine, if agitated-- stuttering out of their sweeping loops to form up in rapidly-spinning rings, all those thin pupils snapping in the same direction, staring at a whole lot of nothing. A wing-shaped collection of stained-glass panels sweeps past as if brushing something away, faintly luminous despite the way the void seems to eat light, the darkness rippling strangely around it.

(This is the point, of course, at which Sans remembers that Saha can see things he can’t, that their swarm of eyes outclasses his by orders of magnitude. It’s a thought he would distinctly like to unhave, because as much as _pitiless void_ is bad, something that only looks like a pitiless void but is in fact populated by things he can’t see is _worse_.)

There is a sudden burst of s t a t i c-- horrifyingly familiar-- _b e l l s b e l l s b e l l s_ \-- what happened, why are they doing this again, _what did he do_ \-- a stuttering sound, _b e l l s_ , cracked open, tongues clattering, rhythmless--

So he _is_ going to die.

Just.

Slower than usual.

Not ideal.

 **s a h a q u i e l** , mumbles nothing, but he can barely hear it now.

The reverberating growl of █ ██ ███ ████ isn’t even quite enough to drown out _s t a t i c and b e l l s_.

Sans is familiar, by now, with the _crack_ of his stupidly fragile soul sustaining that inevitable _one hit_ , splintering open along old fault lines, the near-misses of the past-- ~~you have to be more careful~~ \-- breaking into dozens of distinct shards, as he shatters. It doesn’t ever get, per se, _easy_ or pleasant, but it’s… familiar. Old hat. He knows the routine.

( _Papyrus, do you want anything…?_ )

The melting is still new enough to be horrifying.

He’ll take the shattering back and be grateful, frankly.

Delicate fingers, wrapped in flesh, curl around his wrist.

And it stops

being

s t a t i c.

It’s:

Bells ringing in sequence. 

Knowledge, data, thought. 

Eyes, searching; wings, reaching; wheels within wheels, perfectly aligned in any orientation. 

A curve of mirror, reflecting some distant light. 

Structure, formal and resilient, protein chains and architectural spars folding into impossible shapes, built around a secret core of night-black potential, motionless glassy water, opaque with the hesitation of light, patient with promise. 

A song, fractal and mathematically perfect, infinitely looping around a phantom heartbeat, cathedral-in-sunlight, holy in aspect and tone.

 **ME** , sings Sahaquiel, straight into his soul, a whisper pressed against his bones.

His soul rings with it, borrowing the idea of _shape_ from that one-and-everything paradox and clinging to it, reminded that it’s supposed to be something _specific_ and not a formless goo bleeding away into nothing, as it snaps back into its shape. Sans’ eye lights ignite almost automatically-- he’s had enough of not seeing what the _hell_ is happening-- and he does a quick check of the situation, distantly aware that he’s scraping at the inside of his own skull again. Good, great, bad habits all accounted for. The kid’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist, gentle, like he’s made of glass, and every single one of Sahaquiel’s eyes is fixed on his sternum, where his soul must have been lit up like a disintegrating lantern.

“uh,” he starts, with no idea what he even wants to say. Sorry? Thanks? Can we please not do that again, once was enough and twice was overkill?

“Sahaquiel,” the kid tells him reassuringly, a familiar liliting hum under their breath, what must be the closest thing a human voice can make to approximate all of… _that_.

It is _weirdly_ comforting.

He can still kind of hear it, echoing in the back of his head, setting up occasional counterpoints to the background hum he’s familiar with.

The pitchy, grating white noise whine is still going, but honestly it’s kind of on the low end of Sans’ concerns right now. The kid, apparently content with his general condition at this point, is kind of frowning into the middle distance at apparently nothing. Whether this is their new thinking face, or they _really do_ see something he can’t see and they’re taking exception to it, he cannot begin to guess.

The nothing… _moves_. Which is a contradiction he’s not going to look too closely at-- something about the void looking into you, and he’s had a little too much of that lately already-- particularly since it renews a spike of irritatingly familiar pain in the back of his skull. Because he didn’t have enough problems.

(And wow does he ever not want to think about _those_ implications. Add it to the list.)

[͏͘Sa̴̡n̶̷̕s̨͝?]̸ the white noise rattles, and he flinches, glancing around Sahaquiel’s wheels nervously. He didn’t hear that. Did he hear that? ͟[Is͜ ͞that̡-- what’s͝--͠]

Apophenia. Random pattern recognition. He’s imagining things that aren’t there because his mind is trying to make sense out of nonsense.

(Making order out of nothing. **ME**.)

“uh, did you hear--”

The nothing moves again.

[͟I͘s th̛a̸t ̸C̡S͢-͠1̴?̸ ͡I҉nt̨ere͏sting͜. I p̶ŗo̢je͡c̡te͟d̨ ̷its҉ sur̸v̧iva̷l҉ ͝at--͝]

Again.

That’s just screaming, white noise shearing up into a piercing wail, terrified and miserable and familiar and definitely contributing to the headache building in the back of San’s skull, grinding away at the bone.

The angel seems totally disinterested in whatever’s happening, wings sweeping out in a cascade of self-sustaining light, gliding effortlessly through the weirdly undulating black, cutting ribbons of brief color into it. Their wheels grind briefly together, a seamless wall of gold that almost shimmers, and then spin out of existence, leaving just an after-image of that shield behind, wings fading into the liquid darkness, eyes flaring brighter, brighter, coalescing, gathering into a single, terrifyingly bright point, colorless and pale, just above them. That primal dream of light he saw the first time, before all the _forms_ filtered into his mind.

Maybe that’s their soul, he thinks, a little dazed. Maybe, when you get right down to it, all they are is _light_. And everything else is just… window dressing.

██████, they rumble, while the kid hums that new-familiar song against the side of his skull, eerily perfect in a way that Sans is pretty sure he could graph into a Fibonacci spiral.

Just as the angel’s wheels spin back into being, as that frozen light splits into thousands of individual eyes again, the white noise whine falls off into silence. And then--

[Everything is fine,] says Gaster, in a language that Sans has known his entire life but which everyone else just hears as _white noise_ , a hesitant smile on his broken face, [I’m not angry.]

“dings?” he breathes, watching the smile slip a little, soul catching in his ribs.

That’s his _dad_.

They never called him that. Papyrus tried it on for size once, and Gaster had made this _face_ , like he’d been stabbed. He hadn’t actually told them _not_ to call him that, but. Even Pap had gotten the message. He hadn’t been too broken up about it-- Pap always got a kick out of calling him The Illustrious Royal Scientist Doctor W. D. Gaster after they’d gotten a letter addressed that way to the house one time, anyway. Gaster rolled his eyes every time, but he smiled when he did it, that half-quirked soft-edged thing he only ever got when he secretly thought one of them was _hilarious_ and didn’t want to admit it for fear of encouraging them.

Calling him “doc” didn’t make him _not their dad_.

Looking back, Sans is pretty sure it means their dad had _baggage_ , but who doesn’t.

[I have told you not to call me that,] says Gaster, his features strange and uneasy but unmistakable, cracked sockets that were the dominant feature in most of Sans’ memories for _years_.

“this is him,” Sans hisses, clinging to the kid’s shoulder, “this is him, this is dr. gaster, i couldn’t remember _him_ , how is that, he _raised us_ , how--”

Sans killed him. His thoughts abruptly shut down as that sinks in. He killed his dad. They’d had a fight, and Sans had been an ungrateful little shit as usual, told Gaster to stay away from Papyrus, stay away from _him_. And when the arguments had become silence and the silence had become a kind of disconnected exhaustion-- when he’d watched Gaster wander through the lab like a ghost, trying not to look at Sans without _looking_ like he was trying not to look, mostly accomplishing nothing but walking into corners and furniture and stalling there, shoulders hunched up like he was waiting for a hit-- Sans had tried to fix it. And in grand high fuck-up fashion, he had taken a shortcut right into the one place Gaster was always telling him not to go-- the start of the whole goddamn argument in the first place, because he was an _idiot_ \-- and hadn’t even gotten a whole thought put together, hadn’t even decided what he was going to _say_ , before Gaster had flinched, startled, slipped, _fallen_ \--

He’d always been so jumpy, why hadn’t he _thought_ of that, Gaster had always been a little anxious, a little highly-strung, and Sans had thought it was _funny_ most of the time. His cool dad, the smartest person in the Underground, as easily spooked as a whimsun.

[I’m not angry,] he’d said quickly, signing along to underline his point, as he fell, like that was the most important thing he could say as he _died_.

[I was not a very good guardian,] Gaster says mildly, peering around at the wheels and eyes of the angel-- Sans wonders if he recognizes what he’s looking at, if he ever really knew what he had in the Core-- as his one good eye light finally flicks on and stay that way, the familiar shapes of his skull solidifying, even as the rest of him stays… half-finished. [You did most of it yourself.]

“shut up,” Sans snaps before he can stop himself, then winces. Good job, kill him and then yell at his ghost, you’re doing _great_ with that making-up thing. But those were his old familiar arguments, that’s the selfish bullshit Sans was always yelling about when he was a teenager-- god, he was the worst teenager-- like he didn’t _know_ how badly things could have gone if Gaster hadn’t cared, if they had really just been _CS-1_ and _P-2_. He gave them _names_. 

“no. you were _there_. you cared about us, they could have done anything to us, we weren’t even _real_ \--”

[WHO TOLD YOU,] demands Gaster, black boiling off his bones as he rises-- Sans always forgot how tall he was, he was taller than _Papyrus_ when he wasn’t hunched over his desk or coiled up in a tangle of limbs, papers all around him, tinkering with his projects-- void fanning out behind him like a living coat, the cracks in his skull deepening, that soft smile turning down into a sharp, vicious snarl that Sans has never seen before, [THAT YOU WERE NOT REAL?]

Sans freezes instinctively, self-preservation kicking in belatedly as usual-- Gaster didn’t show off his combat magic much, but when he did it tended to be either finicky and precise or _laying waste_ with thorough and brutal efficiency, with very little in between-- but there’s no way to respond to that.

Nobody told him. Nobody had to.

Kids didn’t grow up in laboratory containment. There hadn’t been any records of them left by the time Gaster had reluctantly conceded that they were sufficiently established as being his wards that people wouldn’t look twice at Sans if he interned at the lab, but that didn’t mean he didn’t _remember_ it. Papyrus had been just a babybones, barely four, when they left the lab-- 

Sans had carried him on one hip, half-tripping behind Gaster’s impossibly long stride, because there was no way Pap’s little legs would have been able to keep up; both of them wearing striped sweaters they’d never seen before, which Gaster had dressed them in and then eyed critically, turning on his heel and clicking his fingers until Sans chased after him; one hollowed-out hand sweeping up and all the fingers closing abruptly, as all the cameras on the floor cracked, spitting sparks, under the weight of suddenly intensified gravity crushing them into component parts; hurrying past a room he didn’t recognize that was just _on fire_ , Gaster not even turning his head, deadly calm, [Follow me and do not stop.]

\-- but Sans had been almost eight years old. He remembered the other scientists, before the soul cracking incident when Gaster had decided he didn’t trust anyone else to be in the same room with Sans. Even when it was just Gaster, it had been tests and examinations and Gaster muttering to himself, into his recorder, the vague outlines of whatever he wanted them for.

They were experiments. Projects, with designations and reports and tests and _purposes_. Gaster had given them names and let them be something else, _insisted_ that they be something else, but that didn’t change what they started out as. If Sans hadn’t ever started talking, maybe they still would be.

None of that seems like it’ll appease Gaster, though. He looks like he might go on the warpath any second. Sans can half-believe that if he said a name right now, Gaster would tear his way out of the void without even thinking about it.

But he doesn’t say anything, and Gaster’s rage can’t sustain itself without something to lash out at. He never did stay angry for long. It always fizzled out into misery and confusion, like he couldn’t understand how anyone would disagree with him, like he just must have not _explained it_ right, even if the thing disagreeing with him was, like, a fundamental law of physics.

[... I’m sorry,] Gaster murmurs, curling in on himself again, all those familiar lines muddying back into indistinct goo, his face fading back to familiar mild shapes, worry and apology in the unhappy curve of his mouth, [Everything is fine. I’m not angry.]

“i have literally never seen you that angry before in my life,” Sans says, blankly. It was kind of impressive, actually. Not a little terrifying. If Gaster had ever reacted like that when they were growing up, Sans suspects he would have been a lot better behaved as a kid. “and i worked at it.”

[Vexsome creature…] Gaster mutters, distracted, [Very fond…]

… that’s not the first time he’s recycled something he used to say. And it’s also not really a response to what Sans actually _said_.

“he’s, uh, he’s not all here, is he,” Sans says, faint hope fading back to more familiar resignation, ducking his head into his hoodie a little and hiding his hands in his pockets before they do something to betray him.

Of course he’s not. He’s _dead_ , or as close as he can get to dead wherever this is. Whatever purgatory Sans accidentally condemned him to. He watches Gaster examine the same stretch of wheels that caught his attention earlier, that one faint flickering eye light tracing a nearly identical path between the angel’s eyes. Caught in his own little loops.

“i didn’t really appreciate him for a lot of it,” he mutters. Master of understatement. “i was such a brat. the shit he put up with, you would not believe.”

In retrospect, he doesn’t know why _Gaster_ put up with it. Growing up, living in Gaster’s empty house in Snowdin, Sans had made it clear on multiple occasions that he didn’t think much of Gaster’s mostly-absentee parenting, and he had always just waited patiently for Sans to run out of arguments, mouth pulled into a sad, confused line. Sans had given him more than enough motive and opportunity to cut his losses. But he always came back, sometimes a little unsure of his welcome but without fail-- lit up when Papyrus slammed full-tilt into him for a hug, like being body-slammed by a skeleton who was getting to be almost as tall as him was the highlight of his week; signed cautious “hello” at Sans around Papyrus’ back, and smiled hopefully when Sans rolled his eyes and signed back at him-- when it would have been a hell of a lot easier for him to stay in New Home, live out of his lab like he did half the time anyway. From the state the house had been in when he’d moved them into it, that was probably what he’d been doing before torching eight years of research and semi-adopting his subjects.

“what a mess. it wasn’t perfect, but he deserved better than this.”

[Do you understand what you are?] Gaster asks vaguely, trapped in some distant memory. Sans frowns into the collar of his hoodie. [... what else?]

Yeah. Good questions. Could always rely on Gaster to get right to the heart of a problem. “getting there, doc.”

[Remarkable,] he murmurs, and Sans remembers where that comes from-- the first time he actually got Gaster to _pay attention_ , to look at him like there was something more than just light in his eye sockets, that split second when Gaster’s face had flipped from curious scientist to delighted parent. It took a couple more years before he bit the bullet, but that right there-- that was when Gaster became his dad.

[Sans. Everything is fine. I’m not angry,] he says-- yeah, Sans came by his line of bullshit honestly-- and then Gaster’s face kind of… _smudges_ , getting less distinct than ever, eye light vanishing like a snuffed candle flame, even as another elegant hand sweeps into existence, curling with its partner. He hasn’t been signing, but Sans supposes that even in this condition he knows Sans can understand him.

Or maybe he just can’t remember how. Hand-sign was his second language, after all.

█████, says Sahaquiel. Sans startles, blinks sideways at the kid, brow bone raised, to see if they’ll translate that into something the rest of the class can understand, but they’re apparently ignoring him, staring at Gaster instead.

Gaster, whose face is doing something distinctly unpleasant back at them, liquid and disdainful. [Is that all you have to say?]

██ ███ ███████, Sahaquiel rumbles, at a pitch that would probably invoke cave-ins if they weren’t in a fathomless abyss right now. ██ ███ █████. ██ ███ ███████████.

“uh, whats--” he starts, before the kid swings out in front of him and plants both hands against his mouth, squinting into his eye sockets. He hesitates, glancing between the kid and Gaster uncertainly.

The angel understanding wingdings, that he could buy.

[We could be more,] Gaster snarls, in nothing like his usual mild voice.

But this isn’t Gaster recycling anymore, is it. So this is a _conversation_. And Sans really doesn’t think Gaster should be any more equipped to hear whatever Sahaquiel’s saying than he is.

██.

Gaster hisses, black wicking into his eye sockets. Sans has never heard that noise come out of his dad’s mouth in his life, increasingly doubts that it ever has before. [No? You do not tell me no, _instrument_.]

This isn’t Gaster.

███ ███ ███████. Sahaquiel’s eyes pull out of their lazy spirals, form up rings around Gaster-- or, whatever was Gaster, whatever’s driving-- oh boy. Oh no, nope, this is not acceptable. █ ███████ █████. ███ ██████ ████ ██ █████.

The loudest person in a body drives it.

Request intercepted.

The Core is a (probably? _maybe_?) dead angel.

 _Falling_.

Oh, he doesn’t like _any_ of this.

[I am nothing?] not-Gaster spits, as his face _shatters_ , the ever-present cracks in his sockets splintering across hairline fractures that Sans memorized as a kid, tracing them on his dad’s face while he was passed out on the couch with Pap sprawled on top of his ribcage. Counting them in his head, wondering how much magic it would take to fix them, to put Gaster back together like a puzzle, make sure nobody ever hit him that hard again.

So yeah, Gaster’s face shattering like a broken soul is probably going to feature in his nightmares from now on, that’s great.

[ _I_ am nothing?] the empty space continues, using Gaster’s hands to pull strands of black away from something shining, faintly, [Look, then, oh pale mirror: look at what is _mine_.]

In the split second before Judgement flares and his vision is suddenly obscured by the light of his own eye, he realizes that the shining thing is _a soul_ , flickering weakly, spiderwebbed with cracks that rival his own. Gaster’s soul, still _whole_ somehow, poised between his hands under someone else’s control. Then his skull fills with an angry electric buzz, blue flooding his sight and washing out everything else, and he flinches so hard, clawing at his socket automatically, that he pulls away from the kid entirely.

███ █████ ████ █████, they say.

The void shears open-- and listen, he’s not a fan of the endless expanse of nothing, but a slice of _something_ in the middle of it, a door cut into existence, is maybe even less preferable-- and something that feels not-unlike blue magic wrenches him through it without so much as a by-your-leave. For a second, as Judgement shuts down and he flicks his own eye lights back in a panic, he can see through into the void, Sahaquiel’s eyes peering down at him.

And then the skin of reality realigns, and all he can see is the dark ceiling of whatever room he’s fallen into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter... was... _a struggle_.


	19. reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds to Chapter Nineteen of _in action how like an angel_.

Sans takes a second, lying on the cold floor, to just breathe and try to process everything that just happened. Void. Sahaquiel’s whole… _Sahaquiel_. The fact that a little more than half of his life has just been dumped back into his mind and doesn’t seem like it’s about to fade back into blank slices cut out of his memory. At least not immediately.

Then his breath hitches, and he realizes that’s going to end poorly and grinds the heels of his hands against his eye sockets furiously, bone scraping, holding his breath. He’s a skeleton, he doesn’t really _need_ to breathe, it’s just a reflex, and he’s choosing _not to do it_ , because wow does he ever not need to have his own crying fit down here in… wherever he is. There’s been more than enough crying to go around, he is _not contributing_. He is not about that life.

Something snuffles curiously at the top of his skull. He peeks his sockets open, curling his phalanges down, to squint at it through the darkness. A big white shape like a melted ice cream cone with a hole for a face wuffs down at him cheerfully. Oh good, he thinks, as Endogeny sits on him and tries to melt into his ribcage through his hoodie, slobbering all over his skull. Alph’s double secret creeper lab. Well. There are worse, or at least less secure, places the void could have spat him out.

Even if it’s kind of extra creepy now that he remembers which room was his containment unit back in the day.

When he and Alph had been interning, this whole floor had been off-limits. Which meant Sans had poked around, of course, looking for evidence of his own existence, but by then Gaster had repurposed all of it for new projects, all signs of Rainy Day meticulously destroyed. Even the layout had been radically altered-- Gaster, typically, had refused to explain this but Sans suspected that sometime after they had left he had gone back in and just… trashed the whole floor in accordance with whatever “lab accident” he was claiming had happened, taken the opportunity to redesign it while he had a good excuse-- and it had taken Sans two weeks of snooping to find his old containment, now a nondescript cleanroom. In retrospect, it was obvious that Gaster had been keeping them safe, _hiding them_ , but at the time it had been irrationally frustrating. Like none of it had happened. Like it didn’t _count_. Eight years of his life, swept under the rug like a… like a _mistake_.

_[This is a secret now.]_

Another stupid argument. Another reckless, selfish thing he never apologized for.

Yeah, no, he’s not doing this.

“ok,” he says briskly, trying to ignore the way his voice has gone all thin and reedy, pushing pointlessly at Endogeny’s mass, “that’s it, that’s enough, good dog, get off of me, i’m done with the pity party.”

Endogeny slobbers some of their component goo thoughtfully against the side of Sans’ skull, and then finally boofs agreeably-- this sounds more-or-less like half-a-dozen dogs of various sizes and temperaments all simultaneously barking, which is kind of accurate from what Alph has explained of the situation, but it’s not as chaotic as it could be, all things considered-- and clambers to their way-too-many feet. Small mercies.

They wait patiently for him to crawl to his feet and scrape goo off of his skull and hoodie. It’s viscous enough, and sticks to itself enough, that he doesn’t think he’s going to have to scrape any goo out of the fabric fibers, fortunately. They duck their approximately-a-head so he can dump the goo on them and then flick the remaining drips off of his phalanges and then they full-body shiver it back into place. Sans can detach limbs at will and even he thinks that’s a little disconcerting, but they seem to be fine with it. Then they execute a play-bow that Sans recalls being way more upsetting the first time he saw it, but apparently he can no longer be creeped out by several fused dogs performing a series of rippling, synchronized half-bows until their whole confusing mass is splayed out on the floor, wagging enthusiastically.

They seem, you know, pretty chill with their whole experience. Probably Sans should take notes.

“i dunno, buddy,” he says, glancing around the darkened lab, “got kind of a lot going on right now.”

They make a plaintive grumbling whine and droop a little bit into the floor. He sighs.

“yeah, okay, fine,” he says, shrugging. They pop up immediately, wagging hard enough that bits of goo splatter a little bit in either direction. Sans decides to ignore that. “we’ll multitask. alph probably hasn’t fed you guys today, right?”

That gets him a sharp bark of confirmation, and also Reaperbird’s head swaying around the doorframe, apparently close enough to hear and express an interest, so yeah, probably not. He should have checked before he kidnapped her to his lab, but whatever, he’s here now. It won’t take long, and he can find out if the kid’s on the cameras while he grabs the kibble.

He doesn’t really have a plan for if the kid isn’t on the cameras, so hopefully it won’t become an issue.

“that one’s my fault,” he tells them, as he reaches for the upstairs lab, “i needed her for something. do me a favour and don’t give her any grief over it.”

Reaperbird ticks-ticks irritably, but Endogeny just waggles their whole body enthusiastically, and then he’s upstairs.

Specifically, he’s upstairs tripping over Alph’s desk chair and nearly slamming his skull into her computer, because what he really needs to cap off this absolute _nightmare_ of a day is to get his own skull fracture and really hammer home the family resemblance, but he manages to get a hand up in time to grab the back of the chair and just kind of collapse into it. So, not his smoothest shortcut ever. Not his _worst_ shortcut-- now that he can actually remember figuring them out, half instinct and half pure dumb childish experimenting, except without any guidelines or hypotheses or general safety procedures, just _bet i can take a shortcut into mid-air and doc’ll catch me_ , he was lucky he hadn’t killed himself or fallen into the void _accidentally_ \-- but it was probably bottom twenty, somewhere right below _shortcut into a snowdrift taller than he was_.

Doesn’t feel like anything went actually wrong, though. Just missed his mark. Running down his magic reserves-- Sans has a lot of spare that he doesn’t do much with, as a rule, but he’s been doing a lot of pretty careless magic and he did open his day with a blaster barrage. Probably eat something. Note to self.

At least the kid actually _is_ on the cameras, and not either missing or still in the void, either of which Sans is pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about except wait to see if time was going to rewind again. As it is, they’re placidly walking around Waterfall, petting echo flowers and visibly pausing to listen to each ones. He doesn’t love them wandering around Waterfall, but at least they got dropped out past Undyne-- she should still be lurking around the entrance waiting for Pap’s report. Should be safe enough for a minute.

When he gets back down to the lower level-- elevator this time; it’s exactly as long and tedious as he remembers, but he supposes that isolating the part of the lab where you do the dangerous experiments from the rest of it is about as close to safety procedures as anybody ever got in the Science Department, back when there still really was one-- Lemon Bread has her jaw unhinged and Reaperbird’s head in her mouth, and Reaperbird is about halfway to ripping her arm off in retaliation. They both freeze as soon the elevator doors open, and while neither of them actually does any guilty shuffling, they each give him their respective equivalents of nervous puppy dog eyes.

“really?” he asks dryly, walking past them with the kibble.

There’s some frantic scuffling behind him, and then Reaperbird’s head bobs into view from above, leaning far enough over him that they can look into his eye sockets upside down. Lemon Bread makes a trilling little warble from a little further back.

“i dunno, you think you can behave for five minutes?”

Reaperbird starts an urgent ticking monologue about how well they can behave. Lemon Bread does the more practical thing by just crawling past both of them on her way to her usual hangout and feeding point. Reaperbird’s head jerks up to follow her progress with narrow-eyed suspicion, before darting off towards their own part of the lab. So apparently it’s some kind of impromptu race now. Well, whatever, close enough.

An enthusiastic borf warns Sans that Endogeny is incoming, so he summons a bone construct, carefully empty of intent, and flings it back over his head. A lot of scrabbling and barking later it’s dropped at his feet as he’s pouring kibble into their bowl.

They try to feed him kibble, slorping up half their bowl and then shoving the rest in his direction with their whole head, leaving a trail of slime behind that they presumably imagine is appetizing, but they’ve been trying to get Sans to eat kibble the entire time he’s known about them. He’s pretty sure it’s a dog thing-- none of the other amalgamates are interested in sharing, and occasionally if he’s not paying enough attention at Grillby’s his food will spontaneously multiply on his plate, and Dogamy and Dogaressa will spend the rest of the night being extremely pleased with themselves, like they don’t have _actual puppies_ to be weirdly parental about-- although it’s possible that it’s a “you’re a skeleton” thing and they just think he’s starving to death. Either way, they’re reluctantly placated when he nudges the bowl back in their direction with his slipper, muttering, “nah, buddy, i’ll grab some chisps on my way out.”

Lemon Bread and Reaperbird are in their respective sections of the lab, studiously pretending that they have never done anything wrong in their lives, which makes feeding them easy for once. Memoryhead just shrieks at him, but that’s not unusual. Snowy’s mom apparently isn’t up to making an appearance, but that’s okay. She giggles a little from wherever she’s hiding about halfway through his usual supply of snow-related jokes, so she’s probably fine. Endogeny continues to follow Sans through the lab, enthusiastically chasing the bone construct no matter how lackadaisical Sans’ throws are.

“hey, n _ice_ job, buddy,” he tells Endogeny in the freezers-- Snowy’s mom laughs again, somewhere-- as they drop the bone by his feet, panting. He kicks the bone further into the freezers as he finishes filling the dish. The bone skitters easily along the tile, spinning, and they go galumphing after it, thrilled as ever.

Whether they decide to escort him to the elevator to make sure he holds up his end of the kibble vs. chisps bargain or they’re just milking as much playtime out of him as they can get is up in the air, but he’s not complaining. Endogeny is pretty good company, all things considered, and it’s not like they get out much. Or have visitors. Or even see much of Alphys.

In retrospect, it’s possible that Sans’ whole “grew up literally in this lab” thing somehow influenced his impulse to help out with the amalgamates, given that he puts in the bare minimum of effort in every other area of his life. They aren’t confined to containment, and technically they all had (a lot of) lives before this, but. Experiment solidarity, or something.

He throws the bone construct through the doorway, into Lemon Bread’s usual room-- Sans suspects she has some kind of thing for the DT extractor, maybe just likes comparing her teeth to its incisive bone-- and adds a little blue magic tail to the bone to give it a little extra zip. Endogeny tears off after it into the dark, to probably give Lemon Bread a heart attack while they’re at it.

The skidding of a dozen slightly sticky feet on tile is not alarming.

The sudden cacophony of _growling_ is.

Endogeny doesn’t get into fights. Not even with the other amalgamates.

Sans picks up the pace and crosses the threshold just in time for Endogeny to bounce backward, still growling, their massive body rippling in what’s probably their approximation of raised hackles, as thick, thorny vines rip through the tile where they were standing. Lemon Bread has retreated to the other side of the room, her jaw unhinged and making a horrible keening noise, but not at them. Perched on a little mound of raised dirt and cracked tile, the sole focus of two _very_ angry amalgamates, a very familiar flower takes one look at Sans, its face morphing from incongruous smile to disgusted sneer, and snaps, “Ugh, not _you_.”

On the one hand: it’s never a _great_ sign when the pest makes himself actually present instead of pulling whatever strings he’s interested in from far enough away that Sans can’t _confirm_ that he’s responsible and should be incinerated. On the other hand: real convenient that he doesn’t have to _chase down_ the tunneling, probably murderous, definitely manipulative, intermittently time-controlling flower.

Gripping hand: probably too convenient.

Sans draws up even with Endogeny and puts a restraining hand their gooey, rippling flank, aware that his smile is already strained. Across the room, Lemon Bread crouches and snaps her teeth, the wail dying down in her throat, watching him for cues. “aw, don’t _patella_ me we can’t be _buds_. you’re really putting me in an _orchid_ position here. you sure you’re feeling _bouquet_?”

There’s a split-second where the flower’s mouth splits along the seams into what’s best described-- in Sans’ professional opinion-- as a maw, black-streaked in a way that was much less disconcerting an hour ago, and it seems like he’s going to _literally_ scream. And then, quick as flicking a switch, the sly smile is back. “Y’know, golly, I really see what Papyrus is always talking about! Your puns _are_ just _awful_.”

“... is that supposed to hurt my feelings?” Sans asks, almost amused.

Flowey’s expression does a complicated little dance as smug satisfaction morphs through bewildered, to frustrated, to furious, and then snaps back to stupidly cheerful. It’s a heck of a face journey. Sans just has that effect on people. It’s a gift.

“Golly, no!” Flowey chirps, “Why would I ever want to hurt _your_ feelings! I just came to warn you!”

… okay. Sure. They can play this game for a while. Why not.

“that so.”

“Yep!” Flowey says cheerfully, “There’s somebody _really_ dangerous around right now! You probably met them!”

“uh huh.”

Flowey sways forward a little, lowering his voice to an ostentatious stage whisper. “In fact, I saw them around your house not too long ago! Golly, you should check on Papyrus! You know how… _trusting_ he can be.”

“... really, that’s what you’re going with?”

There’s a flicker of surprise, quickly overwhelmed by aggravation. “I don’t know what you mean! I’m just looking out for my friends! Don’t you care about Papyrus? Gosh, I don’t know _what_ I’d do if something _happened_ to him!”

Sans shrugs, peeling his phalanges out of Endogeny’s goo to gesture at them, snarling ominously with their ears pinned back. “not sure exactly what you think you’ll be able to get up to without me around, anyway, seeing as you’ve already pissed off the locals.”

Lemon Bread shrieks her agreement briefly, slithering a few inches closer. Flowey glances between the amalgamates as more vines begin breaking through the tile and snaking through the lab. It does not escape Sans’ attention that most of them are taking round-about paths towards the dormant DT extractor.

“Y’know Sans, you’re right. We are _real good friends_ , aren’t we? After _all this time_ ,” he says, but although his voice shifts into a nastier tone, and the smile drops off like the discarded mask it always has been, there’s something…

“if that’s your way of checking whether i remember you, _flowey_ , maybe work on your subtlety,” Sans sighs.

“Oh, don’t be stupid, you idiot. I figured out you _remembered_ ages ago. That’s what made you _fun_ , even if you always played by the rules before you got all… _lasery_ ,” Flowey sneers, rolling his eyes extravagantly.

“Which is why you _should_ be worried about our _mutual friend,_ ” he adds darkly, glaring up at the DT extractor. His leaves shiver a little. Sans isn’t actually sure if it’s an act, which is new.

“which one?” Sans asks, a little sardonic but mostly curious.

“Something’s wrong with Chara…” he mutters, still staring up into the empty eye sockets of the machine, “I don’t know. They weren’t like this before. It’s getting worse.”

Interesting. “... chara, huh?”

“ _Obviously_ Chara, you idiot!” he snaps, twisting to glare at Sans, “Do you know any other fallen humans?!”

“funny story, actually.”

The very toothy face is crawling back onto Flowey’s pistil. He turns back to regarding the DT extractor, vines twining around the pipes. “Forget it. You’re useless anyway. You can go away _peacefully_ or _permanently_.”

“oh, threats now, huh? well, this has been fun.” Mildly informative. Mostly irritating. About as usual with the weed. “but i’ve got other things to do today.”

“hey, buddy?” he adds, patting Endogeny once, “ _fetch_.”

One of Endogeny’s ears twitches back towards Sans for a split second, and then the whole amorphous mass of growling dogs lurches forward abruptly, going straight for the flower. They get slammed aside by a frantic vine at the last second, and immediately pin it the ground, furiously snarling. Lemon Bread lunges for the closest vine, locking her jaws around it and shaking her head back and forth restlessly, trying to tear it apart. Flowey whips around from one threat to the next, expression switching between condescension, rage, and fear in rapid succession. One vine makes a valiant attempt to skewer Sans, which he sidesteps, already bored; if nothing else, all those encounters in the Hall have really made the whole fight experience _unspeakably_ dull without the threat of the entire universe maybe just unravelling this time. Dozens of thorn-studded vines burst out of the tiles and slither up the edges of the pit that the DT extraction machine hangs over, but aside from the handful whipping ineffectively at the amalgamates, nearly all of them are focused on trying to pry the DT extractor out of the ceiling.

Yeah, no, whatever he wants _that_ for is bad news.

Sans summons a pair of blasters, Judgement flaring in his skull under his own power for once, and they unfold out of space obediently, the whine of magic already charging between their bifurcated jaws. Flowey’s eyes widen, and the flower that is (probably) his main body tries to burrow back into the disrupted earth. Endogeny abandons their attempt to become one with a vine and lunges for him, paws scrabbling at the dirt and managing to rip up a curve of stem. All of the vines thrash wildly, nearly tearing the DT extractor off its supports, as Lemon Bread reluctantly drops her own slightly shredded vine to slither over and support Endogeny, hooking her arm around the exposed edges of the curling, twisting stem and pulling, shrieking irritably.

Beams of raw magic cleave through the vines attached to the DT extractor, the blasters coordinating tidy arcs near the points of contact, and as usual with Flowey, the KR can clearly see something soul-adjacent and _very nasty_ that Sans can’t, because it hits _hard_. The vines recoil, burned edges flicking and twitching in the air, as a second pass burns a deep loop around the huddle of Flowey’s half-buried flower and the amalgamates, tile flying up in a cascade of shattered, burning shards as the buried vines are severed closer to the source. The exposed vines collapse immediately, nerveless.

There. Should be a small enough mass, now.

There’s no soul to grab Flowey by-- never stops being creepy-- but he’ll make do.

Sans snaps his phalanges, and blue magic washes over the stem. Lemon Bread drops it immediately, zeroing in on another dead vine to worry at, but Endogeny just growls again, scrabbling more dirt away. Sans wrenches _up_ , and Flowey comes flying out of the earth, writhing and thrashing uselessly, roots and truncated vines straining to return to the safety of the ground. Endogeny barks up at him, bouncing a little.

“I hate you! You’re the worst! You’re disgusting trash! I hope they kill your stupid brother!” he shrieks, his face all dripping black and sharp angles, petals ruffled and misaligned.

“nice try,” Sans says blandly, dragging Flowey behind him a couple of feet off the ground. The blasters hover placidly behind him, all their attention fixed on the captured flower, dully glowing latent magic crackling between their jaws, waiting for further opportunities to be unleashed.

Lemon Bread glances up from chewing on a discarded vine and flings it into the pit as he passes, chittering, before moving on to another one. Endogeny just shakes themself all over, vigorously, and trots along at Sans’ heels, barking once.

“good dog,” he offers, but they just bark again and keep up their escort. 

Alph never did clear out her ‘control cases’, dozens of potted golden flowers drooping under the dim, flickery fluorescents, but she isn’t using them and none of _them_ have ever gotten uppity, so Sans doesn’t feel particularly bad about dumping one out on the counter. Flowey fights being potted like a wet and ornery cat, but between the blue magic limiting his mobility and the blasters looming in his face, magic whining in their eyes and teeth, he eventually slumps as limp as any other flower. Sans dumps dirt on his stupid flower head, a little bit vindictively, until he’s got just enough dirt to root in, finally letting the blue magic lapse. 

Flowey writhes and lashes against the ceramic-- cursing, but in the mildest and most ridiculous way Sans has heard in a while, all “Shoot!” and “Darn!”, in incongruously venomous tones-- but apparently without a more substantial base of ground to work from he can’t burrow, and his roots and remaining vines aren’t strong enough to drag him up the sides of the pot. Good enough for now. Sans picks up the pot, dismissing the blasters-- they nudge the back of his skull on their way out-- and carries it under one arm, pressed against his ribcage, as he walks. Endogeny watches with interest, head tilted to one side.

Reminds him of the kid.

Really need to wrap this up.

“you know, really,” he says, glancing down at the sulking flower, “you should be grateful i’m not just setting you on fire. solve a lot of problems all at once. also i kind of hate you, so there’s that.”

Flowey’s head cranes back to glare at him upside down. “Aren’t you supposed to be all _love and compassion_?” he sneers.

“don’t forget hope,” Sans says dryly, “you know i’ve got just buckets of that.”

No snippy response follows that, to Sans’ surprise. Flowey just slumps forward, glaring dully at the floor over the rim of the pot.

His head whips up again when he hears the hiss of the exterior airlock disengaging. “What’s that?”

“containment,” Sans says, with a certain amount of irony, tapping a couple of Alph’s codes into the keypad. Red. Red. Red. Hm. “you didn’t think i was just gonna carry you around all day, did you?”

Flowey doesn’t have much to recommend him, but his glares _are_ pretty impressive. Something to do with the way he can reshape his face, maybe. “Don’t think it’s gonna be _that easy_ , trashbag.”

Maybe Alph doesn’t actually use this room. Sans taps his phalanges on the plate above the keypad for a second, then tries a few of Gaster’s old codes. Red. Red. Oh, yep, there it goes. The exterior door closes and the air shower starts cycling. Flowey _shrieks_ , ducking down into the pot, and Endogeny, rippling in the air currents, turns in a couple of tight circles. Sans just sighs when his hood flips up over his face. There are many reasons for cleanroom clothing, and that’s one of them, but Sans could not care less about particulate contamination right now.

“oh, i dunno,” he says mildly, as the interior airlock opens, “it kept me locked up for almost a decade.”

Flowey’s gobsmacked expression is _almost_ worth the existential discomfort of honesty. Sans drops the flower pot onto the clean counter-- less than an inch, although Flowey still ducks beneath the rim of the pot, wide-eyed, at the tiny fall-- and glances around. Endogeny immediately hares off to sniff in every corner, but there’s not much here-- Gaster must not have been actively using it when everything… _happened_ , and clearly Alphys hasn’t felt a need for a rigorously maintained workspace. The only reason there’s no dust is that the room filters the air so aggressively.

It doesn’t look much like he remembers. Still the most reinforced, secure room in the lab.

“i’ll be back to handle this later,” he tells Endogeny, who stands to attention abruptly, “mind standing guard for me?”

They bark once, sharply, and turn their empty face to Flowey, who sways back in the pot, looking disconcerted and then furious. “If you think I can’t get out of--”

“yeah,” says Sans, “good luck with that.”

“I’m not--!”

“gonna be a challenge without any… _shortcuts_ ,” he adds, and reaches for the lab upstairs just to catch the flower’s face stutter from frustrated to startled to _livid_ as he slides through reality.

He’s petty. So sue him.

Sans double-checks the monitor-- that whole mess took a lot longer than he’d planned to be downstairs-- and sure enough, the kid’s already halfway through Waterfall, although why they’re headed back towards Snowdin instead of towards the Core (or even the barrier) he’s not sure. They’re in the ghost’s house, though, which is a lot closer to Undyne than Sans would prefer.

As soon as he touches the destination, he knows it’s too far-- never did get those chisps, and the altercation with Flowey cost more magic than Sans really had to spare-- but he’s out of options and the door’s already open.

So.

He steps through it.

It doesn’t actually go wrong-- which is something he probably shouldn’t keep testing, Gaster used to bitch about it all the time, _[You are not a perpetual motion machine!]_ \-- but the hollow feeling that floods through his system as soon as he steps into the Blook kid’s shack is… not great. He manages not to literally fall on his face by half-collapsing backwards into a wall, and he’s got enough magic to keep all his bones aligned and his eye lights lit, but that’s about as good as it gets right now.

“welp, probably should have actually eaten at some point,” he acknowledges-- which, in his defense, he had a plan, he just… forgot it-- blinking fog away from his vision.

The kid, one hand hovering uncertainly over the keyboard of a computer making an absolutely _godawful_ noise, and twisted slightly to stare at him blankly, suddenly frowns sharply. Ah. Yeah, he did lie about that, didn’t he. He shrugs, straightening off of the wall that helpfully caught him, and they huff through their nose, sliding something off the table-- oh hey, their phone; straight into a pocket-- and stomping into his personal space to grab his skull with both hands and pull it down closer to themselves. Sans doesn’t fight this, partly because if he does there’s a non-zero chance his skull will just detach rather than waste magic at this point and he has a feeling the kid would absolutely lose it. Also, they mostly look like they’re stressing out about his health, which in Sans’ experience is the kind of thing people will only chill about if he lets them get one solid check in before he starts deflecting. They squint up into his eye sockets, still frowning, and pat the sides of his skull a little.

“looking for something?” he asks, unable to quite crush down a smirk.

“Eye?” they ask insistently, shifting their attention exclusively to his left socket, “Test.”

He glances over their shoulder at the ghost-- Mettaton’s relative? … Napstablook? Keeps to themself, honestly, Sans isn’t very familiar with them-- but prior evidence suggests they won’t see the angel’s presence no matter _what_ they do, and Judgement’ll be so busy staring at Sahaquiel that Sans probably won’t actually catch a glimpse of whatever’s in this monster’s soul. And anyway, after the void he has a feeling that the angel’s presence isn’t going to hit quite as hard-- not after it was the only thing that _wasn’t_ void, not after… whatever it did with its song that sank into his soul like a piece he hadn’t quite realized was missing. Which, yeah, they’ll probably need to talk about that at some point. Not in mixed company, though. He sighs, waving at the kid in acknowledgement. If it’ll make them feel better.

Except nothing happens. They stare intently up at him, watching his eye socket, and he can sense that _gathering_ feeling that seems to precede their eyes opening, but Judgement stays dormant in the space between his soul and his eye socket, unconcerned. He blinks, scanning the empty air around them where eyes usually appear, where wheels and wings suddenly become unavoidable objects looming as present in his vision as souls, but nothing materializes. Or… possibly something materializes, but he isn’t forced to _watch it_.

The kid looks _extremely_ pleased with themself, so probably something the angel did. With absolutely no explanation-- which isn’t really a surprise-- they grab his hand and march right up to the ghost, dragging him along behind them.

“Eat,” they insist, tugging on Sans’ arm and leaning in towards Napstablook in a way that’ll probably be looming if they get any taller, “Very important!”

While Napstablook processes this-- or possibly considers running to Undyne’s house for help with his unexpectedly pushy houseguests, who knows-- Sans tries to gently reclaim his hand. The kid doesn’t even look at him, just laces their fingers through his phalanges as soon they feel him slipping out of their grip. So apparently they’ve graduated from clinging to his hoodie to clinging to his hand.

“kiddo,” he begins, planning to follow up with something on the order of _demanding food from random strangers is what we, in the normal world, like to call rude_. Although in their defense, Pap has been offering them spaghetti at random intervals all day and Sans did force them to eat a burger earlier, so maybe they think that’s normal. He trails off, bemused, when Napstablook just floats to the fridge and ducks their head into it.

“i have… a ghost sandwich… if you want that… ?” they offer, turning to peer at Sans hopefully.

“heh, uh, no thanks buddy,” oh jeez, they must be more sensitive to perceived criticism than Alphys, they look like they’re about to melt into the floor, abort-- “m’sure you make a _spook_ tacular sandwich, but these _boo_ -nes,” hey, two-fer, “need more, uh, substantial food. y’know, something that really sticks to the _ribs_. anyway, the kid’s just fooling around, don’t worry about it.”

The kid cranes their head back to sigh explosively up at him, but it’s not like he hasn’t lied before, they’ll get over it. And he’s not _entirely_ bullshitting-- skeletons _are_ just a little too corporeal to really get anything useful out of ghost food. He could probably eat it, and the magic in his body would _try_ to incorporate it, but most of the energy would be wasted and then the Blook kid would be down a sandwich. 

Napstablook just stares at both of them for a long moment and then quavers, “oh… that’s all i have… nevermind, then, i guess…”

Nailed it.

The computer speakers finally cut out, the… music (?) cutting off without any fade-out. Yeah, that’s their cue.

“welp, we should--”

“do-you-want-to-lie-on-the-floor-and-feel-like-garbage… ?” Napstablook spits out in a rush, like they’re afraid they’ll lose their nerve halfway through.

… Sans should really introduce this kid to Alphys, maybe. They seem more her speed than Mettaton is. She got the wrong ghost somehow.

“it’s… a family tradition…” they mumble, already losing the tiny dreg of confidence they managed to scrounge up.

“uh, we’ve kind of… got things to do,” Sans says, a little reluctantly. Because _they do_.

“oh… i don’t want to be a bother…” they say to the floor, which, yeah, that’s about what Sans expected.

The kid must pick up on the mood, because they suddenly jolt forward, snapping, “No!” and flail a hand at the ghost in what, based on prior observation, was _probably_ the kid trying to pet them. It goes about as well as an interaction between corporeal and non-corporeal objects ever does, which is to say it doesn’t. They pause, and then examine their hand with clear uncertainty while Napstablook sways back, crestfallen.

“oh no… did you want to push me… ? sorry…” they offer miserably.

 _Wow_.

The kid has apparently had enough of this, because they suddenly drop Sans’ hand like a hot rock and stomp a few feet away, where they abruptly _collapse_. He flinches towards them, pure reflex-- what’s wrong _now_?-- but they untangle themselves quickly to glare up at him and flop into a more comfortable position, so apparently that was intentional. Add it to the list of things to explain to the kid at some point. Getting to be a long list. (Maybe he can skip the middleman and see if Papyrus has a “how to human” handbook lying around somewhere.)

“oh, did you want to… okay…” Napstablook says, cautiously lying down across from them.

They both stare at the ceiling in total silence.

Sans sighs, leaning on the cracked wall, and closes his sockets. Sure, whatever. He can go for a nap.

It starts like an hissing, breathy sound laid over a gently oscillating tone, not unlike a tuning fork. And then it builds, slowly, tones layering up over each other, two, three, five, ten, twenty, fifty-- until it’s an indistinguishable sweep of sound, moving in slow, back-and-forth waves, ebb and flow, with a single bright, sustained note gliding through it, holding everything together, the moon directing the sea. He opens his sockets to find the ghost curled on their side staring at the kid, something soft and peaceful and unidentifiable in their eyes, as this impossible song hums in the kid’s mouth.

For once, even though they aren’t really _performing_ an emotion for anyone else’s benefit, there’s a wistful, sweetly sad smile on their face.

It disappears as soon as they open their eyes, falling back to that neutral, hollow waiting position as they sit up and take in their audience.

“... that was… a nice song…” the ghost says, following the kid as they stand up, carefully, “... what was it… ?”

“Stars,” they say matter-of-factly, and immediately reach over to tug on his hoodie, herding him away from the wall and towards the door. Enough socializing, apparently.

“looks like we’ve got places to be, pal,” he shrugs to Napstablook, and scrapes his hand over the kid’s skull on his way out, in the long tradition of older siblings everywhere, which makes their hair stick out in every possible direction for a minute.

He waits for them to catch up, keeping an eye on the road that leads to Undyne’s house. Absolutely the last thing he needs right now is for her to show up all enthusiastic to shish-kebab the kid. He’s not sure “null harm” will really override self-defense, and even if it _does_ he’s not sure he’d be able to talk Undyne out of pulling the kid into an encounter. She’s really more Papyrus’ friend than his-- she gets a very carefully curated experience of Sans that rides the fine line between “intensely frustrating” and “not worth engaging with”-- and he’d like to keep it that way.

He blinks, startled, when the kid shoves both of their hands into one of his pockets and fishes around until they get a grip on his wrist and pull his hand out. Once they’re satisfied with their hand-holding, they march off back in the direction they must have come from, towards the echo flower fields, pulling insistently until he follows them.

“uh, you know where you’re going?” he checks, but at least they’re heading away from Undyne’s, so he’s not complaining.

“Sans house,” they says sharply, “Frisk reports: a boat we can take. Eat.”

Still on this, huh. “ok,” he sighs, “fair enough. after that we have to get back to the lab, though. gotta flower waiting for us.”

They stop walking immediately, looking at him over their shoulder, frowning slightly. He smiles, but the frown just deepens, so it must not be a good one. What can he say, the weed puts him in a bad mood.

“Time flower?”

“yep. found him sneaking around.” Being cryptic and trying to steal dangerous lab equipment.

“Secure?” they ask, scanning his skull for clues.

He shrugs. “for now.” No guarantees with Flowey, but.

They consider him for a moment, but apparently accept that, because they keep walking. They _still_ haven’t let go of his hand. It occurs to him that this might actually be some kind of separation anxiety-- as a babybones, Pap was nervous any time he didn’t have Sans or Gaster in his direct eyeline, and to be perfectly honest Sans wasn’t a fan of not being able to watch Pap at literally every minute of the day either-- or possibly an attempt to prevent one or both of them from being unceremoniously flung to the other end of the Underground if the void gets uppity again. Kid doesn’t exactly have a lot of options down here.

“... stars, huh?” he says, not even totally sure why he cares. Antique nostalgia, maybe. Habits he thought he’d broken. Apparently not.

“All songs,” they say simply, nodding, and then stop so suddenly he almost walks right into them, spinning to pat at his sternum with their free hand, “You hear? This? You hear?”

_[Music, CS-1. From this response, may I infer that this is not the sound you refer to?]_

_[Do you understand what you are?]_ Gaster used to ask him, and now Sans can recognize that he wasn’t being coy and vaguely ominous _on purpose_ , he was just _like that_ , and he didn’t really have an answer to that question either. Never really knew what they were, what the _mechanism_ was.

_[I touched something dangerous twice.]_

He would really rather not think about this, or _anything_ it implies. “maybe. but not the way you hear it, probably.”

The kid blinks into his sockets for a second before nodding vaguely and turning to drag him along behind them again. “Songs for small. Songs for big. Songs for one. Songs for many. One star, one song. Many stars, different song. That? Many star song. _All_ star song. Yet small, this voice. Still good.”

Heh. Working their way towards full sentences any day now. “... yeah. still good.”

They veer right towards the river and the ferry without hesitation, but they pause to assess the boat. Maybe the first time they’ve actually seen one.

“snowdin,” Sans tells the Riverperson, climbing onto the barge ahead of the kid mostly to demonstrate that it won’t immediately sink.

They don’t seem particularly confident, staring down into the river uncertainly-- to be fair, they are not historically great with irregular terrain-- so he holds out a hand for them. And then pulls, just enough to tug them a little bit off-balance and into the boat, which they stumble into with a lot less trouble than they probably would have had overthinking it. From their frown he doubts they agree, but among the few intangible benefits of being the adult is practice with handling and overcoming various babybone anxieties.

“relax,” he says, amused, as they push away from him despite the irritation already fading fast from their expression, “i wasn’t gonna let you fall. you just gotta learn to take the step.”

They squint back at the shore, slowly fading at the boat begins floating down the river, but before they can decide how they feel about this the Riverperson hums, their usual three-note refrain, and the kid freezes rigid, their eyes going distant, but not talking-to-Frisk _dead_. More staring-into-space, lights are on but nobody’s home. Sans’ eye sockets narrow, studying their posture, before it clicks-- they’re _frightened_. Really, genuinely scared in the way that shuts down all higher functions as their whole body tries to cobble together an action plan for surviving a threat. They did this in Snowdin, too, he saw it on the camera logs. That was probably the comparatively large number of monsters present, probably the most people they’d seen in one place up to that point. This can’t be that, there’s just him and the Riverperson here, and they weren’t _thrilled_ about the step down into the boat but they didn’t seem _scared_ , not like this.

“ _... why don’t you sing with me…_ ” the Riverperson suggests, and a fine tremor runs through the kid’s spine from top to bottom, their breath hitching as soon as they hear the first word and not evening out until the talking stops.

“... uh. sure, buddy,” Sans says, scanning between the kid’s face and the Riverperson’s hood. The hood inclines slightly towards him for a second, and then weaves back towards the kid, with an ominous grace that Sans hasn’t ever really noticed before. Riverperson’s always sort of… vague and disconnected. And what they’ve actually _said_ doesn’t sound any different than the usual fare, but…

“ _~Tra-la-la~_ ” they sigh, “ _... dancing on a boat is danger… but good exercise..._ ”

“that’s nice,” he snaps, watching the kid’s eyes, their pupils dilating wider. He starts pulling them away, although at this point he’s pretty sure they’re reacting to something about the Riverperson’s voice-- something about the way it echoes? lack of an obvious source in the hood? no, they aren’t looking-- and not their presence per-se. Can’t hurt to create some distance, anyway.

“ _~Tra-la-la~... what’s my name?... it doesn’t really matter…_ ” they opine, something gently amused creeping into their usual bland delivery. Sans resists an impulse to shove them off their own stupid boat. Read the room, pal.

Sans spins the kid around so they can watch the water receding-- just cut down on visual noise, give them something simple and calm to look at-- and they’re shivering, honestly shaking, which clearly isn’t a reaction to the cold or they would have started doing it _long_ before now. Their fingers are curling and uncurling in the hem of their sweater. Gonna fray it down to nothing.

Some kind of panic attack. That’s okay. He can handle that, and they can figure out what the problem is later. One thing at a time.

“you’re ok,” he whispers, running his hands over their arms carefully-- not a lot a skeleton can do in the body heat department, but some gentle friction will warm them up a little, and remind them that he’s here. Points of focus. “just a creepy monster. you can handle creepy monsters, right?”

Even with the Riverperson _finally_ shutting up, the kid is statue-still, the only movement their shivering, their picking fingers, and breath whistling unevenly through their teeth. Sans keeps up a steady monologue of reassuring mostly-nonsense, less because he expects to actually get through to them and more just to give them reliable background noise. He keeps checking the bank, waiting for the terrain to switch to snow. It’s not a long ride, come on.

They make a terrible little whining noise in their throat.

“saha? you’re ok. … i’m not gonna let you get hurt, ok? … i promise,” he sighs finally, smoothing down their hair pointlessly.

Who knows if they can even really hear him at this point.

S’okay. It’s not a promise for them.

He’d absolutely _love_ to know what set them off-- what they’re actually afraid of-- but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. He was in over his head from the very first anomaly. He just doesn’t have the luxury of _stopping_.

When you’re the only person who even knows what the fuck is happening, it becomes your responsibility whether you’re ready for it or not.

Flash of white in his peripheral vision. _Finally._

“see? made it all the way to snowdin and everything’s fine. you’re ok,” he says, gently swivelling the kid through the motions of walking to the edge of the boat. They stumble along with him blankly, obedient despite being totally out of it. “just walk with me, saha, you’re ok. you don’t have to turn around. remember what i said? just gotta take the step.”

They falter, slowly turn their head down to stare into the thin sliver of space between the boat and the shore.

“ _~Tra-la-la~..._ ” hums the Riverperson, and Sans tries not to crush the kid’s shoulders when his hands clench, a wave of _absolute rage_ sweeping through him at this _asshole_ pushing his kid when they’re _obviously freaking out_ , “ _... the waters are wild today… that’s good luck…_ ”

He pushes it to the side. Deal with it later. Deal with everything later. Just get the kid off the boat. “everything’s fine. you’re ok. go ahead.”

They hesitate, twist their hem sharply, inhale-- and step forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be away from my computer, and thus unable to really write, for the next week or so-- so the next update won't be for two weeks or so, probably. :(


End file.
